The Oroboros of Memetics

meme

mēm/

noun

noun: meme; plural noun: memes

1.

an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means, esp. imitation.

Many discount memes as the scourge of the internet; a happenstance regression of online culture.  In the concept of memes I find something more.  Bold as it may be, I find memes to be form of regression of thought, but it also represents something that previously in history did not embody the same meanings it contains today.

Some have noted that the further back in mass culture that one goes, the more shared experience there is.  This certainly can be quantified by asking an old timer what movies were their favorites.  They will most likely list off common names, and few names.  Ask anyone today their favorite movies and you will be bombarded with a diverse history of just the past decade.  Not only has the production quantity of mass culture grown exponentially, so too has the division among it's consumers in finding their niche.

As the masses follow their ever more diverse and specialized interest, thanks to the digital revolution, so to does the difficulty in finding shared territory of which to embody those interests. 

So follows the meme.

The modern meme construction represents a method of shared experience.  Even language is a meme by the above definition.  For instance, the certain dialects specific to geographical areas are memetic.

Language differs on a fundamental level, however.  Memes capture a specific shared experience and to some degree encode that experience into a concise simulacrum.  Those that have no point of reference for the meme will not garnish the meaning of it (try showing your grandma a meme).  To them it would appear just an odd picture and a text caption.  To those who construct or use memes, they are sharing a personal internal experience.

Some might ask if this sharing of personal experience through memes, rather than words, is a product of a failing education system.  Grammar has always fallen short in the regard of spoken word.  One can write in ways that a person would never speak.  And previously there were no ways in which a writer could capture feelings with simple expressions, only vague stanzas to express a single thought.  The invention of the smiley face, for instance, is an example of such.  Someone saying 'smiley face' is not the same as :) both carry varying meanings. 

The meme harkens upon multiple systems of phenomenological  input.  It uses words and pictures both, and depending on who the particular meme may be of (do note that most memes are a 'character' if even through anthropomorphic) it can queue audio hallucinations. 

The primary aspect of memes seems to revolve around the character within the meme.  Each specific type of meme embodies a particular phenomenological experience that could, indeed, be written out in just words, but in abstaining, it conjures more impact, and is far more elegant in its simplicity.  The question then arises, by confining experiences to specific memes, is the transfer of cultural genomes doomed to siphoning upon itself?

Memes are in a way a form of oroboros, of the snake eating its own tail.  Many people dislike memes, but cannot quantify why. They can only qualitatively infer that memes degrade culture.  There is in some sense, a quality of how memes are sublimated into their simulacra form.  I would be the first to point out that there is a marked truncation of experience in meme transfer between cultural data, but would also be hard pressed to find a similar means achieve such shared experience.

Culture feeds upon itself.  As counter culture moves further to the extreme outside of mass culture, mass culture is there to sublimate counter culture and sell it back to the masses.  This system of production has pushed mass culture far into the realm of counter culture, as seen by sites like knowyourmeme.  One could even say such websites are 'content free', in that they only track memes but do not produce them, except perhaps, in that they are as 'worthless'  as memes themselves.  Worthless perhaps, but meaningless?

Certainly not.

If we are living in the age of the global village, does that mean too there will be an infancy in global language?  I do not mean by this which exact language is being spoken, but instead I point to the 'worthless' babble of a child learning to speak.  Learning to sublimate their needs into words.  Perhaps memes are the global village's first words, and as the vernacular increases so does the specificity and clarity of the cultural messages.