Homesteading the Memeosphere
Who owns the memes? How dare we ask such a laughable question?
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Articles tagged internet culture.
Who owns the memes? How dare we ask such a laughable question?
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.
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.
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.
I just found a really strange website where a guy claims Zen is a scam and that he's figured out how to solve any koan. He even provides a Free Zen Riddle and Koan Service through which you can email him a koan and receive an answer.
I was walking home from a friend's place yesterday when I saw a few children chasing each other and play fighting. As I walked past, I heard one tell the other, 'get wrecked!' I wondered whether they learned it from video games they play (my guess was either LoL or DotA, but it could be one of those FPSs) or from older kids (or perhaps, most befittingly, even older kids online!) they know such as their older siblings.