I may have shared what is usually called a meme, a photo with a smart-aleck statement on it, over the years. I have a near relative who does this often on Facebook, which is a primary reason why I first unfollowed him and then got off FB. He is capable of solid argument, but even in email correspondence no longer does so. One more bit of evidence that we do not become wiser as we age and should be very suspicious of life-extension strategies.
My number of memes may be small, but I can still reduce them. The number is now zero. Call me out if I transgress on this. The new article at Quillette is quite persuasive. It includes a bit of meme history as well.
The subset of memes that focus on politics are generally designed to boil complex issues down to a digestible combination of emotive image and sloganeering text that flatters those who agree with its message and provokes those who do not.
Most academics who study memes agree that they are poisonous to healthy public discourse (“toxic” is a word that crops up a lot, even in the scholarly literature). One scholar bluntly called them “one of the main vehicles for misinformation,” and they tend to distort reality in several ways. By their very nature, they leave no room for nuance or complexity, and so they are frequently misleading; they tend to lean heavily on scornful condescension and moral sanctimony (usually, the intended takeaway is that anyone who agrees with the point of view being—inaccurately—mocked is an imbecile); they make copious use of ad hominem attacks, straw man fallacies, and motte-and-bailey arguments; they intentionally catastrophize, generalize, personalize, and encourage dichotomous thinking; and they are aggressive and sometimes dehumanizing. They are, in other words, methods of Internet communication that display all the symptoms of a borderline personality type of mental disorder.*
...But since memes add almost nothing to public discourse that would offset the risks, it’s probably worth hesitating before sharing them.
Of note, frequent commenter David Foster has written about the topic at Chicago Boyz, with reference to a previous Quillette essay on the topic.
*Italics mine, and no, not all the symptoms, but a a goodly percentage, yes, even by strict clinical standards.
12 comments:
One popular meme is "the left can't meme." So it must be banned. That professor you linked to is a lefty based on his Twitter.
Do you not like sarcasm as well? It could be a generational thing as most younger people love sarcasm and are the main purveyor of spicy memes
I used to like sarcasm when I was young but now consider it (mostly) unhealthy.
I've been threatening to redo American Gothic with robots from Star Wars and the legend "Support Inorganic Farmers." As you say, I probably shouldn't. (Not that it would look good anyway--my Gimp-fu is pretty poor.)
Sarcasm is toxic unless aged and well-seasoned, then served sparingly. That requirement eliminates almost all political memes... except those well over 200 years old. A mere witty insult is not sarcasm, and though I sometimes enjoy those, I seldom pass them on. Unless there is an exceptional pun involved. I'm a sucker for puns.
Anything that the right does better than the left, must be banned. It's a law or something.
The worst poison to healthy discourse is lying. The topic here is memes, and the arguments against are worthy opinion. But is it not the only fact here, is that you don’t like them. Conflating ‘not like’ with bad is the ditch on either side of the narrow path.
The Foghorn Leghorns of this world really, really hate being limned so accurately. As surely did the subjects of Cruikshanks, Gillrays cartoons.
But the dividing line which can’t be seen but matters most is between the liars and the merely wrong.
The Foghorn Leghorns of the USSR used psychiatry as their response, Vladimir Bukovsky speaks well about that. I would hestitate 3 times to unholster your DSM-5, said with respect.
The kind of lying that needs illuminating in our ‘postmodernist’ today is especially self pity. Paul Bunyan’s path over ‘Thelma and Louise’.
It’s hard to say old dudes were correct and most of us now are wrong. The closer the wronger. It’s a definite thing.
@ Kevin - I am not entirely sure I follow your comments from one place to another, but I will hazard guesses.
I don't think my liking or not liking matters all that much. It is a question of whether a medium is more vulnerable to abuse than others. I have seen memes that I like very much and can at least imagine becoming attached to the craft. Yet it does fairly invite oversimplification, similarly to political cartoons, as was mentioned. I have some fondness for the Babylon Bee, and they occasionally engage in memes. Perhaps I should just skip those.
I wrote years ago about the poisonous influence of Doonesbury https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2006/06/influence-of-doonesbury.html
and then reprised it https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2019/08/highest-page-views-50.html I include both because the comments were good on both.
As for psychiatry, I'm not sure what you think American psychiatry has to do with the Soviet version
I agree with the other commenters who say that professors hate memes because their forte is long and boring articles and not short and pithy memes. The quality of memes is as varied as the quality of anything else, and all are highly perishable; but they are undoubtedly a form of communication adapted to the new information environment. Masters and monopolists of older forms naturally hate them.
The last response from me on this very interesting topic, thank you. If memes are a medium especially vulnerable to abuse, perhaps they are especially transparent and if necessary, refuted. Transparent as in “I think this is true/I think this is a lie” to the receiver, which is what matters.
Contrast this to the inculcation of hatred and self pity over our lifetimes by longform and praised media. Some leftists say the right started it - I don’t know - but Dirty Harry was a long time before Thelma and Louise. Which is also wrong road far behind us.
re Sarcasm, here is some advice from Field Marshal Lord Wavell:
"Explosions of temper do not necessarily ruin a general's reputation or influence with his troops; it is almost expected of them ("the privileged irascibility of senior officers," someone has written), and it is not always resented, sometimes even admired, except by those immediately concerned. But sarcasm is always resented and seldom forgiven. In the Peninsula the bitter sarcastic tongue of Craufurd, the brilliant but erratic leader of the Light Division, was much more wounding and feared than the more violent outbursts of Picton, a rough, hot-tempered man."
and
"He (the general) should never indulge in sarcasm, which is being clever at someone else's expense, and always offends."
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