The Philosopher's Meme

Culture
1. Homesteading the Memeosphere
  Who owns the memes? How dare we ask such a laughable question?
2. GME Frenzy Hints At the New Stage of Memecultures
  A central theme of post-2015 memecultures was the gamification of memes. This gave rise to Facebook memepages as well as a "meme president". Post-2020 memecultures now struggle with the challenge of the cope, which is an inevitable consequence of creating new games with a loss condition.
3. All Memes Are From the Future
  All memes are from the future: the literate memer anticipates that the meme will spread and change in meaning depending on where it gets reposted.
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Metamemetics
1. Metamemetics
  The new philosophy of memetics. Originally published in Critical Meme Reader III.
2. Memes and Humor: Reply to Claudia Vulliamy's "What is a Meme?"
  Simon Evnine responds to Vulliamy's recent article on the definition of memes.
3. What Is A Meme?
  A cluster definition of memes, taking into account memographic practice, comedy, public shareability, use of images and/or text, digitality, appropriation, anonymity, ephemerality and stylistic resemblance to other memes.
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Aesthetics
1. Frog After Frog: Prompt Engineering With Alternate Translations
  I report the results of a prompt engineering experiment on DALL-E 2 involving different Japanese-to-English translations of the Frog Haiku by Matsuo Bashō (松尾芭蕉, 1644 – November 28, 1694).
2. We Can Have Retrieval-Inference Synthesis
  A Modern Synthesis of art criticism is possible.
3. Every Gondola Is a Shrine
  I think of every gondola post as a shrine, for people to come together and appreciate them in a spiritual way.
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Irony
1. When You Drink [water]
  Post-ironic memes are great because they are meaningful. Meaningful memes bring us closer to the dream of the timeless meme, just like early comics artists who aspired towards serious literature with an ostensibly unserious medium.
2. Defining ‘Normie’, ‘Casual’, ‘Ironist’ and ‘Autist’ In Internet Subcultures
  The following is my take on doing the same for online subcultures. I do this by clarifying the definitions of three highly popular terms used on the Internet to describe different kinds of subcultural participants, and clarifying the concept of the ironist in the context of online subcultures.
3. Post-Irony against Meta-Irony
  The Ironic Meme Movement was a reaction against the mainstream co-option of the subcultural products of the underground; an attempt to create incorruptible inside jokes. The Ironics employed defensive strategies which paralleled that of the punks against the commercialization of their own subculture. Like the punks, they failed.
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Game Studies
1. GamerGate As Metagaming
  GamerGaters were correct in their assessment of gaming culture and the games industry precisely because of the conspiracy theoretical nature of their campaign.
2. The Memetic Bottleneck
  Like a panel in a highly networked version of the Infinite Canvas, every meme is both a potential bottleneck and a possible choice. Since the sense that every meme has a preceding meme is essential to the appreciation of memes, the memetic bottleneck works in the inverse direction of the narrative bottleneck, generating potential pasts. To choose a meme to post is to choose which game to play with the audience. More significantly, it is to choose which save file to load up: it's scenario editing of history, conditioned on current mood.
3. Memes Are Not Jokes, They Are Diagram-Games
  The meme means different things to different viewers as a matter of degrees, not a matter of either getting the joke or missing it, or reading it ironically or not.
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History
1. Wittgenstein's Most Beloved Quote Was Real, But It's Fake Now
  A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of fake philosophy quotes.
2. 2010's Decade Review, Part 2: Memetaphysics Through Three Lenses
  In this article, I explore the new metaphysics of memes that developed throughout the 2010s. I use three distinct perspectives to approach this vast subject matter: time; place; and, process.
3. Jjalbang (짤방), the Korean Meme
  Fundamental Concepts In International Meme Studies: Jjalbang, the Korean Meme
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Philosophy
1. Postnaturalism
  All technology exerts some epistemic influence on the observer, and this is often epistemologically relevant; the proper function of philosophy is to study the epistemic effect of technology, and to design and produce epistemically useful technology; localised agreements rather than shared beliefs, entailed by the use of common technology, are sufficient foundations for philosophical discourse.
2. How to Digitally Coauthor Articles In Philosophy Class
  A group assignment activity for philosophy students at the undergraduate level, which can be applied in tandem with existing curricula. Consists of a way to standardise the work of each individual student such that each student’s contributions to the group assignment fits in seamlessly with the other team members’ contributions, and a way to apply the system to the specific course material being assessed.
3. A School of Internet Philosophy
  I think there's a school of ‘Internet philosophy’ like there is continental philosophy or Anglo-American philosophy, with its own dominant interests and a unique style of discourse. I'm trying to figure out what this consists of. It's a combination of demographics, dominant areas of interest (both within and without strict philosophy) and conventions and canons unique to the school.
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Politics
1. On Circlejerk
  The logic of capitalism is reproduced in online communities as circlejerks, where quantified affirmation supplants monetary profit. Like capitalism, democratized Internet culture is inadequate to its own promise of freedom. Originally published in 2017.
2. A Tale of Two Healthcare Narratives
  Some conservatives claim that the free market saved Korea from COVID-19. I argue that it was Korea's Confucian democracy and technological environment that helped them contain the pandemic, not the lack of supply side regulation.
3. The Structures of Hyperspatial Politics
  Sites of content production in Web 2.0 are strategic assets which make up the terrain of political conflict in hyperspace.
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Articles

Browse articles by category, start with recent writing, or go straight to the complete article archive .

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Culture
8 articles
Metamemetics
6 articles
Aesthetics
10 articles
Irony
7 articles
Game Studies
6 articles
History
12 articles
Philosophy
4 articles
Politics
8 articles

Latest Articles

Recent writing from the archive.

Metamemetics May 17, 2024

Metamemetics

The new philosophy of memetics. Originally published in Critical Meme Reader III.

Seong-Young Her
Aesthetics September 21, 2023

Frog After Frog: Prompt Engineering With Alternate Translations

I report the results of a prompt engineering experiment on DALL-E 2 involving different Japanese-to-English translations of the Frog Haiku by Matsuo Bashō (松尾芭蕉, 1644 – November 28, 1694).

Seong-Young Her
History April 6, 2022

Wittgenstein's Most Beloved Quote Was Real, But It's Fake Now

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of fake philosophy quotes.

Seong-Young Her
Culture April 4, 2022

Homesteading the Memeosphere

Who owns the memes? How dare we ask such a laughable question?

Seong-Young Her
Metamemetics December 30, 2021

Memes and Humor: Reply to Claudia Vulliamy's "What is a Meme?"

Simon Evnine responds to Vulliamy's recent article on the definition of memes.

Simon J. Evnine
Politics December 18, 2021

On Circlejerk

The logic of capitalism is reproduced in online communities as circlejerks, where quantified affirmation supplants monetary profit. Like capitalism, democratized Internet culture is inadequate to its own promise of freedom. Originally published in 2017.

Chicago School of Countercultural Inquiry
Metamemetics November 30, 2021

What Is A Meme?

A cluster definition of memes, taking into account memographic practice, comedy, public shareability, use of images and/or text, digitality, appropriation, anonymity, ephemerality and stylistic resemblance to other memes.

Claudia Vulliamy
Aesthetics July 21, 2021

We Can Have Retrieval-Inference Synthesis

A Modern Synthesis of art criticism is possible.

Seong-Young Her