Guide:
I. Introduction
II. Components of thinking
III. Mechanisms of cognition
IV. More mechanisms
V. Types of memes
VI. Meme2Meme2Gene interactions
VII. Human2Human transmission
VIII. A Bigger World
IX. Gravity of 'plexes ← you are here
X. Three is a crowd
XI. Third scenario
XII. Religion and philosophy
XIII. Mental disorders of the new age
XIV. True vs Fake
XV. Outsourced Me
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I'm writing this mostly for fun, don't take it seriously. I might hit a bullseye and accurately describe a real thing, or it's just a set of bollocks. I'm not certain, nor do i particularly understand what i'm dealing with. This might become important for others. I lack information necessary to make this topic crystal clear and outside help is most definitely welcome.
1.Memealogical trees
Let's proceed anyway.
Now we are going to talk about "evolutionary stable strategy", and some other stuff. This is a term created by Richard Dawkins, and is describing the set of behaviours which allow the specific type of animal to live long enough to procreate.
Spending too little time and resources on attracting mating partner lowers your chances of getting one, but spending too much leaves you weaker and more likely to fall victim to predators. Ever seen a peacock? A colourful bird, no doubt, with a mighty plumage. The problem is - the tail. To make it grow big a bird have to consume a lot of food, and i doubt it's increasing size affects bird's mobility positively. So a balance should be kept so the tail doesn't grow too big, lest the bird die.
In similar manner - it's wise for an animal to not just attack every hostile being in the vicinity, even if those creatures' death would increase the access to resources and eliminates competition and the potential of being attacked by them in the future. Why? To attack another means to get wounded and weakened, reducing animal's chances of successfully finding resources for survival, and increases the chance of catching a decease. Additionally, the animal that was killed wasn't a competitor only for the attacker, there are others, and they got their list of enemies reduced without losing anything, and they aren't the attacker's friends.
To put it short: any creature have to find a way to be enough of a dick in order to not get abused and exploited by others, and fuck a mating mate, but also to not be too much of a dick, so it doesn't accidentally fuck itself over. That balanced set of behaviours is varied from creature to creature, and is labeled as "evolutionary stable strategy".
That's the gist of it.
Now think bigger - remember the “Tunnel effect“? Now apply it humanity wide. To the whole history.
Which is very likely hard to do, so allow me to walk you through it. Ever heard of Adam and Eve? No, not Biblical ones, the biology terms, i mean. All life on Earth gotta start somewhere, right? If we are truly evolved starting from microorganisms, then there must be “the start“ in the first place - some bacteria who’s genealogical tree lasts to this day; first two microbes are humanity’s Adam and Eve (ignore the specifics, like the likelyhood of those micros’ procreating asexually, or the fact that it’s just a concept, not an actual thing discovered in real life).
And since memetics borrows plenty from biology, it stands to reason there exists The Very First Human Idea too, which parented all other generations of thoughts, going through all significant stages, like inventing fire, wheels, weapons, trade, books, computers, - whatever you can come up with.
But it ain’t gonna be just any thought, each result of human thinking is a consequence of many systems interacting, both inside and outside of the mind, which provide a starting point and a “direction“ of growth. All ideas should at least not significantly hinder the chances of survival of the human host, lest it dies with it’s memes, and there should be some benefit given by this thought, and it’s going to be relevant to the environment in which the host exists at the time (e.g. - can’t make stone tools if there’s no stone, can’t come up with ways to make ’em too for the same reason). Additionally - traditional evolutionary effects are present too, meaning there’s going to be “speciation“ among ideas, creating various “techniques“, “philosophies“, and “schools of thought“. Just like birds are a big category made of sparrows, pigeons, eagles, owls, swifts et al, so the “weapons“ are made of “swords“, “knives“, “spears”, “bows“ and the rest. Like a tech tree in Civ 6, or some other video game, but painting a picture of the mind’s endeavours.
2.Data compression
If you make a map of all memes existing throughout the history, and map them in a way to show how closely-related they are in "memetic distance", and possibly a physical distance - burgers and guns are close due to America, you'll see that the structure of the map is not uniform. Memeplexes cluster together. There gonna be a lot of memes clumped around certain(ish) points, and a lot of empty space everywhere else, meaning that plenty of lines of evolution of ideas didn't survive. Reality is hostile not only to biological organisms, arctic cold and desert heat kills information too.
It's a manifestation of a lot of forces creating bottlenecks, where only certain memes and combinations of them are capable of passing, especially when in a relationship with other memeplexes. Some ideas synergize better than others, some don't work long-term at all. You don't see "cannibalism" being actually practiced around much, don't you? In a manner similar to that - a lot of memes are dependent on each other. “Marriage“ is nothing if it’s only symbolic, it has to carry some changes in behaviour in all parties involved, with benefits and drawbacks. “Ownership“ is dead in the water if anyone else can take what you “own“, or this status is easily revoked too. And are you even “You“ if someone else can do whatever they want to you without consequence?
The points of gravity, where most ideas congregate, - let's call them "focal points", or "point of attraction", represent general set of behaviours or ideas which allow humans to survive well in given environments, and major deviation from those points represents a risk and possibility of significantly lowering the chances of survival and/or producing offspring. As a consequence, ideas in general can't stray too far from those points due to relatability mechanics of associations and interpretation, but a lot of new memes will be a product of memes from within those points, going further and further both through time and “distance“ from the focal point.
”Don’t be a dick” is a common “focal point“. “Machiavelian“ mindset - isn’t.
Perhaps somewhere at the start of it all there was a bigger variety of things people were trying do to survive, untill the something eradicated sub-optimal behaviours, even if people didn't develop the noosphere to this extent we see today, or maybe the points of attraction were always present due to devastating effects bad memes have on human's chances of survival.
A lot of this is the consequence of the environment dictating the course of evolution due to it's effects - when in Rome, do as romans do, when in Paris, you'll get parisian memes, but also add to that everything i said about programs and patterns being cue-dependent. In a way, certain places become attraction points for certain types and kinds of information. Attraction points don't only exist in some abstract map of "relationships", but also in actual real world, bound to places. Can a person be “Greek“ without visiting Greece? Can a person be “Greek“ while living in Thailand?
I didn't call this aspect of memes "gravity" for no reason, there are actually two effects it has on knowledge:
1) “Gravity” means that over time knowledge initially too inaccessible to most people gets it’s “distance“ “compressed”, making it easier to obtain, learn, and understand. Your ancestors spent eons to come up with the concept of pottery - you can just google it. And more memes aggregate over time around those points of “gravity“, meaning - if you want to find some specific piece of information, you need to scout it in it’s “environment“, the “gravity point”. Roman knowledge is in Rome, tradcath farm girls are not in the cities. For the same reasons more and more information aggregate around those points in general, both through any human activity involving creation of technology, and traditions, and art; and through specifically building places dedicated to storing knowledge, like archives and servers. In the past we had cave paintings, today there are thousands of pictures of naked women and men in HDDs of our devices.
2) A consequence of some behaviours being optimal for humans in specific environments is the ability of some memeplexes to be... recurring. Because all the pressures which reated the original idea are still present, then even after it’s death, it will manifest itself throughout human history, even if slightly different, or under new name. Like lost technologies, and archetypical memes. Technically, man's attraction to big tits is a recurring pattern of behaviour too, but that's too easy of an example(and it's genetic as i recall), and wootz/damascus steel being reinvented will interest metal-lovers(awaiting verification), - not the kind of people who are interested in memes, or so i assume, so let's have actual standarts and find something more obscure. Example number one: drawing dicks everywhere. Okay, i'm kidding. The example i’m not kidding is existence of “Mytheme“ - elements of different myths which resemble each other, indicating they are “adapted“ versions of the same story which came from differen source. Bible isn’t the only book which features the story of betrayal and biblical floods, and Greeks aren’t unique with their myths of heroes going through ordeals as means of finding atonement and ascention.
3.Wolves in dragon’s clothing
Originally i thought to use the repeated usage of snakes in various cultures as symbols of malicious force, but it's not that simple. It is certainly not rare for myths to depict scaled creatures as targets to be destroyed, for example: Tiamat, the goddess of primordial sea and chaos, who is often depicted as either a dragon or a snake, killed by Anu in Mesopotamian religions; Leviathan - the dragon of the sea and a symbol of chaos, is destined to be killed by the God of semitic religions; Apep in Egypt, the god of, you guessed it, chaos, and also darkness, who's in the constant state of war against Ra, the god of sun; and of course we can't forget the snake that deceived Eve in Christianity, for which he was punished. There are plenty of stories of dragons or snakes stealing people, stealing riches, and in general being a nuisance, with a brave knight embarking on a journey to slain it. These are less deified, and usually represent some less biblical level of trouble or existential threat, but still impose an unbearable price for their allowed existence. Notable examples: story of Saint George slaying a Dragon; Beowulf fighting similar creature in the poem named "Beowulf"; or the legend of Sir Lambton defeating the manifestation of his errors, taking form of a dragon/giant serpent. Perhaps a symbolic representation of atomic bomb being used against a nation taking form of a "Godzilla" fits in here too.
While the trend of associating lizards and their relatives with destruction and change for the worse exists, it's not universal: Dragons of the chinese culture, while formidable and powerful, don't symbolize catastrophic events(probably because they aren't "dragons" - they came to be as a consequence of mixing together various animals, so it doesn't originate from human fears and vices. It's scales are of fish, after all); Feathered serpents of mesoamerican cultures, such as Quetzalcoatl, usually represent the arts and crafts, and rain.
Stories about reptiles being trouble-makers are definitely more abundant, snakes in particular. In Mexico there are even stories about slithering creatures sucking milk from cows' udders (that’s where the Milk Snake’s name comes from), or even human women (Alicante). Old custom dictates to leave a plate of milk for snakes, to keep them away from cows. If trouble comes - blame a snake.
There was some research, which claims to find that humans react to images of snakes and cockroaches faster than others, indicating the presence of genetically-encoded patterns for better recognition of such entities. I don't find it reliable, but it does explain why the pattern of malicious elongated creatures with scales is so prominent, and so much of it is negative, - the command to hate is written under our skin. Need more research.
A common explanation for this trend of repeating themes is that it ultimately has one origin point, and everyone else is just repeating what they liked to hear/see, and the differences can be explained by adaptation of the idea to local sensibilities. Dragon slaying is an awesome story, just gotta change a few things to make it resonate better with people *here*. Alternatively: another explanation can be drawn - “convergent evolution“ case - similar stories are similar because of similarities in the environment creating not too different pressures, folding ideas alike in “appearance”. Both Mayans and Japanese had an idea of bunnies living on the moon - weird innit? It is perhaps possible for such a myth to travel from one culture to another through Bering Strait pass, but it is also possible for both cultures to never come into contact and ending up with similar stories still. Explanation is simple - similar “environment“, “environment“ being humans themselves and the way they were built - both cultures had different approach to building temples, but they had the same eyes looking at the same moon in the same sky. Well, not “same“ per se, there’s more gears to this mechanism, like actually knowing what a “bunny“ is being a necessary prerequisite for developing such a myth (really hard to imagine what you never saw before, and dificulty rises by orders of magnitude on societal scale - not all ideas become popular enough to last), so a degree of luck is present too. Other cultures may see something different.
4.Frogs for chaos
There's one particular curious moment of archetypes re-emerging through time, representing matters overarching and hard for human minds to grasp. It was dubbed "meme magic" by the internet users.
The term describes a phenomenon, when different symbols on internet culture, seemingly unrelated to each other, turn out to have connection to the symbols of ancient civilizations and what they represent.
Are you familiar with Pepe the Frog? It's a mascot of 4chan, frog borrowed from an old comic, and is frequently used to portray emotional reactions of people on image boards.
At least, that's the most frequent usage of his likeness, but it goes beyond that - Pepe is a stand-in for an average person in anonymous culture, living an average life, appearing in average situations, who looks 5/10, which is why he's frequently used in posts describing some anon's events, to represent him and his opinion and reaction to that event.
However, Pepe is not limited to ">be me" posts, usual shenanigans of remixing content, like turning every known or not person into a frog with a liberal usage of photoshop, are frequent. Following the natural evolution of memes a variation of Pepe was spawned - Apu, a younger, more autistic, and innocent version of Pepe. Apu's role in the discourse is similar to his grown-up, fatherly version, but Apu is also a more mischievous one, more prone to pranks and childish behaviour.
Important to note that internet frogs were frequently entangled in american politics and controversies, the most notable ones happening during elections of 2016 and Donald Trump's presidency. Pepe was frequently used as a mascot for movements on the right, and, as ADL claim, alt-right too. Frog is inseparable from 4chan and it's actions, especially the achievements of the image board in the real life, like that one time they found the coordinates of a terrorist base and sent them to military for artillery strikes, or how they hunted "They Will Not Divide Us" flags of Shia LaBeuf across the world, or that time a "Twitter Frog" negotiated the peaceful retreat of soldiers during Iraq withdrawal.
Additional piece of importan nformation: i'm sure you have seen plenty of times when someone on the internet expressed their amusement with the word "lol" or "lmao". There's another version of that snicker: "kek".
So how's this all important?
In ancient Egypt there was an ancient deity known as "Kek", which is depicted as a man with a frog head. It's a deification of primordial darkness and chaos, put in humanoid form, whose name's hieroglyphs looks like a man sitting in front of the table, or computer even.
As you can see, this god matched the spirit of 4chan pretty well, at least in general sense, and as a consequence the Pepe frog got ironic cult status, and his own "Kek" religion, where he's worshiped as a "God of memes".
All in all, internet frogs now hold a flair of mystique and mischief thanks to 4chan's endeavors.
5.Those crafty owls
If i had a nickel for every time internet tapped into archetypical chaos i would have two nickels, which isn't much, but still strange that it happened twice.
The second point of meme convergence is her:
Not one-to-one repeat of the previous scenario, but i hope you will be able to see the similarities.
Nanashi Mumei, of Hololive EN, HoloMyth's second generation Vtuber, or to put it simply - a game streamer with an animated avatar. Her character is "Guardian of Civilization" - anthropomorphic form of the force of human ability to develop and create. She has owl-like characteristics in appearance and personality, poor memory, is shy (except when you can see her more psycho outbursts), and has a spirit-mascot that looks like a floating paper bag she calls "Friend". Her name can be translated as "seven poems" or as "anonymous"/"nameless" - canonically girl forgot her name, so that's what she goes by now. "Nanashi" is also a default name in Japanese 2chan.
So let's explore how the "meme magic" works with her.
To start off we'll go to russian segment of image boards this time, 2ch, and our interest lies in one of the character archetypes they made to describe typical human behaviours - the one we need is called "Сыч" (English doesn't have an equivalent letter for "Ы", so just say "Sych"). He's a representation of "loner" personality, but unlike b/tard he's less focused in image boards, and unlike hikkikomori he doesn't mind going outside that much. He just wants to be left alone, even if he doesn't particularly enjoy the solitude. And of course, as a sign of his anonymity his cartoon representation wears a paper bag.
But what is a "Сыч"? The answer is simple - it's a type of owl. "Genus", as they call it. RU image board's archetype got this owl-like comparison due to bird's stereotypical behaviour of just sitting alone in a tree, or on a roof, far away from others. Some may find that experience to be very relatable.
Let's continue diving further down the associations lines by asking: how that genus is called in English? The answer - "Athene". They got their name due to goddess Athena, who was frequently depicted having a Little Owl(Athene noctua) accompanying her, probably to symbolize wisdom. In the city of Athens tetradrachm coins were minted to have depictions of both the owl, and the goddess on them. The city of Athens was known to be a major point of culture, power, and crafts.
Who is Athena? A greek goddess of war, wisdom, crafts and cities, and is guardian deity of the city of Athens. She's known throughout many stories to offer her help in resolving conflicts, offering solutions, and giving tools necessary for resolution. In the myth of Perseus and Medusa Gorgona Athena was the one who gave the protagonist the mirror shield, for example.
I think it is important to note that Mumei's hood has egyptian hieroglyphics in it, but those just list humanity's seven deadly sins, like lust and greed, so that's where the "magic" ends, i guess.
Important to note that the original 2ch post with a picturethat gave rise to "Сыч" 'channer type depicts a different bird - Boreal Owl(Aegolius funereus), but in russian it's called "Мохногий сыч", со associations in the public conscious changed to a different owl due Athenes popping up when you search a "сыч". Also Mumei's design is based on a Barn Owl, and the feathers in her hair belong to an Indian Eagle-owl.
Mumei isn’t at the stage when she directly starts representing solitude and wisdom associated with it, and due to ties to actual human being doing an act, unlike the frog, it might never happen, if her personality interferes with the concept. Let’s give it time, Pepe was just a comic character initially too.
As i see it, to find recurring ideas and themes one need to either dig through a lot of history, or search for more subconscious processes that inform human behaviour and lead to repeat cases, or just look at internet memes.
6.Soyface thy adversary
One such recurrent pattern is usage of faces to add more info to text. Mostly human ones, but any face can do. Remember how i said that language has issues with communicating information due to it's nature? It's very... barebones, and delivers very few types of memes. One such issue is the ability to create emotion.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so the easiest way to set up the mood is to show this>
Reaction image provides a lot of context to the writings even as poor at being engaging as forum posts. It's like a reverse Kuleshov experiment, where the facial expression adds context to the scene. Perhaps such manipulations of the signal were the reason why masks were used in ancient stage plays - through exaggerations they allowed better, more "focused" communication of necessary information and better reception of it.
Being a prime example of symbiotic relationship between memeplexes, context additives, at least on the internet, follow typical evolution path, and already managed to go through a few "extinction events", with only few representations of the idea managing to survive. Remember "Advice animals"? Or "Rage Comics"? A few cycles already passed, and we are currently at the "Wojack" stage, which too will inevitably die, with something else taking a niche. A lot of people recognize the utility of the mask, real or digital, but some came to realization you can put one not only on yourself, but others too, altering people's perception of them.
Thus i present the of "Chad vs Soyboy" meme:
or:
Elevating yourself and denigrating your opponents via alteration of their fictional appearance (even if indirectly) is a tale as old as time, and internet isn't unique at this activity. Or let's put it in less "zoomer" words - "caricatures" is a very old concept, probably created by people from before a 100th year of our lord and savior Jesus Christ.
7.|O|
How many ways of building arches you know? Regardless of your answer i know one way you likely never heard of.
Consider an "Inverse arch"! Or an arch without an arch. How do you make it? Make two pillars, and the ground itself will act as a overhang. Underhang. However, one piece is necessary for the magic to work - something must represent the passage, a portal, a change in location. Usually it's something round, like a circle on the ground, but other shapes and objects are acceptable too.
There's a pattern in the noosphere, which you can find in some places, used semi-knowingly, or created accidentally, due to it's simplicity. In written format it's usually represented by symbols "|O|" or whatever looks similar. And it seems to represent the forces that either trying to get out, or lure you in. With the normal arch you are the one deciding whether to go pass through it or not, but with the inverted arch, - all the agency is in the hands of something beyond. You are not the actor, you are something to be acted upon by...
You can frequently see the pattern in “deep“ movies, like:
Freemasons also love this shit:
You can encounter variations of this pattern in reality too:
I don't know where it comes from, or why it even became a thing and has some power over people's minds, but i know i can go full Siegmund Freud here, so I'll do exactly that. There is a possible source of this pattern, which every human being, no joke, encountered at least once in their life, and it looks like this: