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This might as well as be "Against Tidal Force", because suppressing meme activism is about as tall a challenge. First, admit that it will never happen by volun

This might as well as be "Against Tidal Force", because suppressing meme activism is about as tall a challenge. First, admit that it will never happen by voluntary action. The rumor mill, at least, will keep grinding until the last free-range human is gone, who will tell it to a volleyball if there is nobody else. Then imagine the scale of intervention that would be required to significantly suppress it. It would mean continual monitoring, punishment, isolation, and we'd find ways to signal our discontent through masks and straight jackets. If instead you just opt out, go your own way, plug your ears, you've exited the arena, and the memes will happily steamroll along without you, and with you having less warning to get out of the way. I too have a beef with meme activism, and also the gravitational constant, and the speed of light. Those are all equally winnable battles.

testing123--- 5y ago
It's true that memes have a life of their own but they are currently fueled by social media companies that operate on advertising revenue. This is a fixable problem but it requires changing the model that generates meme worthy content. As long as publishing every thought is "free" there is no viable solution to stopping meme activism because advertisers like it when people scream and shout at each other because it keeps them on sites like Twitter and Facebook longer than they would stay there otherwise. And since they stay longer because they're angry it is easier to show them ads for some product that will cure them of their ills. Commercial interests are fundamentally the root cause of this problem.
nverno 5y ago
There are many things in society - scratch that, nearly everything in society - that I both dislike for one reason or another, but also accept they will never change. Still, it is nice to hear other people express similar opinions. Imagine where we would be if there was never any pushback against bad ideas.
- dimitrios1 5y ago
  The bulk of pushback against bad ideas, especially sinister ones that come with societal blowback, occurs in the form of ignoring them. It's whats happening right now with CRT. You can't speak out against it, without risking reputation or livelihood so you hope to just ignore it until it goes away.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    > It's whats happening right now with CRT. You can't speak out against it, without risking reputation or livelihood so you hope to just ignore it until it goes away. I find this absurd as someone who had an interest in critical theory (including CRT) about 7 years ago. Nobody had even heard of CRT until like 3 years ago and what people call "CRT" isn't even an actual category. It is certainly not being taught in highschools. It's a boogeyman produced by conservative media. I actually am not a fan of many subbranches (ie. afro-pessimism is BS, IMO) and would have no fear about stating that publicly. All that speaking out against "CRT" as a general phenomenon demonstrates to me is that you spend a lot of time reading the conservative media bubble.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      Yeah, my favorite bit is the whole freakout about teaching CRT in K-12 education. (If anyone was proposing that, it might be worth freaking out over, but not for the reasons being cited, but more for the same reasons you’d freak out over proposing Quantum Chemistry as a high school graduation requirement. Except moreso, because QChem is at least reasonably common in undergraduate curricula.)
      - nverno 5y ago
        Hey, I've heard there are people out there who think math is racist, so I'm sure someone out there has proposed teaching advanced racist spotting to children.
        whimsicalism 5y ago
        Uh oh, the dreaded people out there! Clearly this must become a major part of our political discourse at once.
- enskfn 5y ago
  I do not appreciate or even care for social media callouts, but personally I thought it was “nice to hear” a politician apologize for shamelessly defending Israeli apartheid for once. I sympathize with Americans who are unfamiliar with foreign politics, so I am not saying this to fight or shame anybody, but this was not just a twitter event. It was more a result of the study released by Human Rights Watch days earlier than it was a result of social media shaming. This event held important historical significance far beyond Twitter.
ergot_vacation 5y ago
Put another way, sloganeering, and the brain-dead adoption of slogans, has always been a thing. Someone less lazy than me could probably dig up examples going back to ancient Rome. "Meme Activism" is just the latest iteration of "I Like Ike" or "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too." What has changed to some degree is the speed and intensity with which the slogans can impact public figures.
- ILMostro7 5y ago
  Perhaps it was thought or believed that an increased availability of education, in general, had curbed the effectiveness of these types of persuasive methods. Although, it's probable that you are right and they never subsided; only adapting to a new environment and mostly dismissed as outdated in hindsight.
- Joeboy 5y ago
  "Elect Gaius Julius Polybius to the office of aedile. He provides good bread" - graffiti found at Pompeii
sharikone 5y ago
What changed is that the bulk of human communication now is happening on the Internet. And the Internet itself is concentrated in the hands of few companies. And there is an increasing sophistication of actors who play the system. This means that political and societal activism is now manipulable at scales that were inconceivable some time ago. So the human factor has always been there (and arguably helped us when the memes were like "kill the sabertooth tiger!"). But the problem is growing because of technology, which is another thing that cannot lightheartedly be slowed down. So the least we can do is to be aware and minimize the damage
- jandrese 5y ago
  > What changed is that the bulk of human communication now is happening on the Internet. And the Internet itself is concentrated in the hands of few companies. As opposed to TV, Radio, or Newspaper? Corporate control of media has always been a problem. We are just have less political will to regulate these massive media conglomerates now than we did in the past. This includes the old media companies too. Rupert Murdock has stomped all over American discourse.
  - ILMostro7 5y ago
    yes. Larger scale; faster speed; larger populations
  - Natsu 5y ago
    Those are differences of degree, not kind.
- swiley 5y ago
  The solution to this is to make the war these companies are waging on personal computing illegal, but it might be too late for that.
  - notriddle 5y ago
    Not every issue is about general-purpose computing. Whether you have control over your own device or not, you still can't craft an Algorithm For Truth, because there isn't one. The information that you would want to know from a news site, like "Was the election stolen?", "Was Iraq actually hiding WMDs?", "Did Russia actually invade Ukraine?", "Did the moon landing really happen?", "Were these leaked documents forged?", those all exist outside of your computer. The closest you can possibly get is by establishing a chain of custody from whoever gathered the information leading to you, which your HTTPS connection already does. Figuring out whether the site you're connected to is actually telling the truth or not isn't something that having root access would help with.
mcavoybn 5y ago
Just because there isn't a top-down solution that eradicates the source of the issue doesn't mean it shouldn't be observed and discussed. You pointed out that you can't "beef" with the gravitational constant, but if you are aware of it you can avoid its negative affects and potentially use them to your advantage. Gravity will collapse a building, but if you are aware of it you can engineer a building so it doesn't collapse. "Gravity, at least, will keep grinding until the universe is compressed into a single point. To eliminate gravity completely it would require constant destruction, compression, agitation, and elimination of all physical laws. Instead, just plug your ears and scream "LALALALA" a pretend gravity doesn't exist because you will stick to the surface of the planet regardless."
- ILMostro7 5y ago
  Not entirely sure that's how Gravity works, btw, as it's relative to this planet rather than the universe.
- watwut 5y ago
  The universe is expanding.
joe_the_user 5y ago
An individual can fight "meme activism" by creating a practice that isn't it and spreading that practice. But I agree you can't "fight" it by shaking your fist at it and you can't expect it to go away by some choice as long as the forces that put it in place are here.
dahfizz 5y ago
"just don't engage" is not a solution. When BLM burns down cities and Trump supporters storm government buildings, these memes become something much larger. "just don't engage" is the modern day equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns. These "memes" have serious effects on society that can't just be ignored.

testing123--- 5y ago

It's true that memes have a life of their own but they are currently fueled by social media companies that operate on advertising revenue. This is a fixable problem but it requires changing the model that generates meme worthy content. As long as publishing every thought is "free" there is no viable solution to stopping meme activism because advertisers like it when people scream and shout at each other because it keeps them on sites like Twitter and Facebook longer than they would stay there otherwise. And since they stay longer because they're angry it is easier to show them ads for some product that will cure them of their ills. Commercial interests are fundamentally the root cause of this problem.

nverno 5y ago

There are many things in society - scratch that, nearly everything in society - that I both dislike for one reason or another, but also accept they will never change. Still, it is nice to hear other people express similar opinions. Imagine where we would be if there was never any pushback against bad ideas.

dimitrios1 5y ago
The bulk of pushback against bad ideas, especially sinister ones that come with societal blowback, occurs in the form of ignoring them. It's whats happening right now with CRT. You can't speak out against it, without risking reputation or livelihood so you hope to just ignore it until it goes away.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  > It's whats happening right now with CRT. You can't speak out against it, without risking reputation or livelihood so you hope to just ignore it until it goes away. I find this absurd as someone who had an interest in critical theory (including CRT) about 7 years ago. Nobody had even heard of CRT until like 3 years ago and what people call "CRT" isn't even an actual category. It is certainly not being taught in highschools. It's a boogeyman produced by conservative media. I actually am not a fan of many subbranches (ie. afro-pessimism is BS, IMO) and would have no fear about stating that publicly. All that speaking out against "CRT" as a general phenomenon demonstrates to me is that you spend a lot of time reading the conservative media bubble.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    Yeah, my favorite bit is the whole freakout about teaching CRT in K-12 education. (If anyone was proposing that, it might be worth freaking out over, but not for the reasons being cited, but more for the same reasons you’d freak out over proposing Quantum Chemistry as a high school graduation requirement. Except moreso, because QChem is at least reasonably common in undergraduate curricula.)
    - nverno 5y ago
      Hey, I've heard there are people out there who think math is racist, so I'm sure someone out there has proposed teaching advanced racist spotting to children.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        Uh oh, the dreaded people out there! Clearly this must become a major part of our political discourse at once.
enskfn 5y ago
I do not appreciate or even care for social media callouts, but personally I thought it was “nice to hear” a politician apologize for shamelessly defending Israeli apartheid for once. I sympathize with Americans who are unfamiliar with foreign politics, so I am not saying this to fight or shame anybody, but this was not just a twitter event. It was more a result of the study released by Human Rights Watch days earlier than it was a result of social media shaming. This event held important historical significance far beyond Twitter.

ergot_vacation 5y ago

Put another way, sloganeering, and the brain-dead adoption of slogans, has always been a thing. Someone less lazy than me could probably dig up examples going back to ancient Rome. "Meme Activism" is just the latest iteration of "I Like Ike" or "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too." What has changed to some degree is the speed and intensity with which the slogans can impact public figures.

ILMostro7 5y ago
Perhaps it was thought or believed that an increased availability of education, in general, had curbed the effectiveness of these types of persuasive methods. Although, it's probable that you are right and they never subsided; only adapting to a new environment and mostly dismissed as outdated in hindsight.
Joeboy 5y ago
"Elect Gaius Julius Polybius to the office of aedile. He provides good bread" - graffiti found at Pompeii

sharikone 5y ago

What changed is that the bulk of human communication now is happening on the Internet. And the Internet itself is concentrated in the hands of few companies. And there is an increasing sophistication of actors who play the system. This means that political and societal activism is now manipulable at scales that were inconceivable some time ago. So the human factor has always been there (and arguably helped us when the memes were like "kill the sabertooth tiger!"). But the problem is growing because of technology, which is another thing that cannot lightheartedly be slowed down. So the least we can do is to be aware and minimize the damage

jandrese 5y ago
> What changed is that the bulk of human communication now is happening on the Internet. And the Internet itself is concentrated in the hands of few companies. As opposed to TV, Radio, or Newspaper? Corporate control of media has always been a problem. We are just have less political will to regulate these massive media conglomerates now than we did in the past. This includes the old media companies too. Rupert Murdock has stomped all over American discourse.
- ILMostro7 5y ago
  yes. Larger scale; faster speed; larger populations
- Natsu 5y ago
  Those are differences of degree, not kind.
swiley 5y ago
The solution to this is to make the war these companies are waging on personal computing illegal, but it might be too late for that.
- notriddle 5y ago
  Not every issue is about general-purpose computing. Whether you have control over your own device or not, you still can't craft an Algorithm For Truth, because there isn't one. The information that you would want to know from a news site, like "Was the election stolen?", "Was Iraq actually hiding WMDs?", "Did Russia actually invade Ukraine?", "Did the moon landing really happen?", "Were these leaked documents forged?", those all exist outside of your computer. The closest you can possibly get is by establishing a chain of custody from whoever gathered the information leading to you, which your HTTPS connection already does. Figuring out whether the site you're connected to is actually telling the truth or not isn't something that having root access would help with.

mcavoybn 5y ago

Just because there isn't a top-down solution that eradicates the source of the issue doesn't mean it shouldn't be observed and discussed. You pointed out that you can't "beef" with the gravitational constant, but if you are aware of it you can avoid its negative affects and potentially use them to your advantage. Gravity will collapse a building, but if you are aware of it you can engineer a building so it doesn't collapse. "Gravity, at least, will keep grinding until the universe is compressed into a single point. To eliminate gravity completely it would require constant destruction, compression, agitation, and elimination of all physical laws. Instead, just plug your ears and scream "LALALALA" a pretend gravity doesn't exist because you will stick to the surface of the planet regardless."

ILMostro7 5y ago
Not entirely sure that's how Gravity works, btw, as it's relative to this planet rather than the universe.
watwut 5y ago
The universe is expanding.

joe_the_user 5y ago

An individual can fight "meme activism" by creating a practice that isn't it and spreading that practice. But I agree you can't "fight" it by shaking your fist at it and you can't expect it to go away by some choice as long as the forces that put it in place are here.

dahfizz 5y ago

"just don't engage" is not a solution. When BLM burns down cities and Trump supporters storm government buildings, these memes become something much larger. "just don't engage" is the modern day equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns. These "memes" have serious effects on society that can't just be ignored.