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I know I'm not the only one who does this. You see some weird reference on reddit to an obscure idea. And you see it again on another social media platform just

I know I'm not the only one who does this. You see some weird reference on reddit to an obscure idea. And you see it again on another social media platform just a few hours or days later. And then, you notice it pop up again and again in the coming months. And you get that impression, that the person referencing it subsequently, like yourself, saw the earlier reference. But it doesn't stop there. A few weeks later a completely independent factoid pops up. Independent though it is, it's related somehow to the other. And you wait and you wait, and someone slaps them together like the world's worst "you got your chocolate in my peanut butter" Reese's Cup commercial. Crudely and imperfectly, you're tracing these memes as they leap from brain to brain. Like an epidemiologist. You can see the outlines of the chains from person to person, even though almost certainly a link here or there is invisible to you. Just the idea of tracing the memes gives hints at why some live and some die. Certainly ancient Hurrians, whoever in the hell they were, weren't able (for the most part) to craft memes that could survive... little of their ideas were written, and some disaster or conquest ended their civilization. Ours are likely no less ephemeral... the Carrington Event that wipes out my comment history might already be on its way. But some ideas and stories just happen to land on barren soil. The listener finds them boring. Or has many other more important stories they prefer. Or, with our disjointed way of communicating now days, the message in a bottle just winds up on a desolate shore. What the link's author talks about is somewhat different, I think. He wonders why the crows that collect shiny baubles prefers one shiny rock over another. It's a fashion thing. This story or that idea seems "cooler", it coheres well with the listener's personality, or makes them stand out when they're trying to woo the opposite sex.

eindiran 3y ago
> You see some weird reference on reddit to an obscure idea. And you see it again on another social media platform just a few hours or days later. And then, you notice it pop up again and again in the coming months. And you get that impression, that the person referencing it subsequently, like yourself, saw the earlier reference. Though I agree that sometimes we can trace the spread of memes in this way, a lot of this feeling is attributable to the frequency illusion, aka the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Skepticism is of course healthy... but the frequency illusion thing may not be applicable here. For the "frequency illusion" to be a valid here, someone somewhere is independently rediscovering the meme, and posting it for friends/strangers/whatever, right? Where are they coming up with it though? It's not from primary/original researcher. They are seeing or hearing other references to it in their social lives. Even if that happens offline (which I certainly hope still happens), then the person they received the meme from almost certainly got it from one of the sources you yourself noticed earlier. Now, because of the way the transmission worked, you missed several links in the chain. But you're still seeing the outline of the chain, even if you're missing alot of detail. Superstitious people think that seeing something everywhere means it popped up because of some supernatural forces or whatever. But I think it pops up because these memes are flowing back and forth between brains, and if you're located in one part of the social graph, you'll continue to see it flowering in proximity to you for hours, weeks, or months.
at_a_remove 3y ago
Yes, I have a very old 4chan archive, starting from 2005. Just taking things as they struck me. Watching various memes surface, evolve, mate, and so on has been interesting.

eindiran 3y ago

> You see some weird reference on reddit to an obscure idea. And you see it again on another social media platform just a few hours or days later. And then, you notice it pop up again and again in the coming months. And you get that impression, that the person referencing it subsequently, like yourself, saw the earlier reference. Though I agree that sometimes we can trace the spread of memes in this way, a lot of this feeling is attributable to the frequency illusion, aka the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Skepticism is of course healthy... but the frequency illusion thing may not be applicable here. For the "frequency illusion" to be a valid here, someone somewhere is independently rediscovering the meme, and posting it for friends/strangers/whatever, right? Where are they coming up with it though? It's not from primary/original researcher. They are seeing or hearing other references to it in their social lives. Even if that happens offline (which I certainly hope still happens), then the person they received the meme from almost certainly got it from one of the sources you yourself noticed earlier. Now, because of the way the transmission worked, you missed several links in the chain. But you're still seeing the outline of the chain, even if you're missing alot of detail. Superstitious people think that seeing something everywhere means it popped up because of some supernatural forces or whatever. But I think it pops up because these memes are flowing back and forth between brains, and if you're located in one part of the social graph, you'll continue to see it flowering in proximity to you for hours, weeks, or months.

at_a_remove 3y ago

Yes, I have a very old 4chan archive, starting from 2005. Just taking things as they struck me. Watching various memes surface, evolve, mate, and so on has been interesting.