[SPEAKER_01]: I know it's old news at this point, but I was in a story yesterday, and I saw the Timothy Shalamevo cover in person, and I truly, like, I went, and jumped back, and that was crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also wasn't inspected, like, really up close.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the physical object, and I was like, yeah, that's bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a crazy note to end on for Miss Anna Win Tour.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, this is Chloe Mell's cover.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, this is Anna's last cover.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's, wait, I'm so confused.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought that the whole thing was that this is Chloe Mell's.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that that's what people assume, but it's actually Anna went towards last cover that she's like oversaw.
[SPEAKER_00]: Coated for her.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's Annie Lebowitz, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that would explain why it's Annie Lebowitz, because I can't imagine Chloe Mell, like working with Annie Lebowitz immediately, when I feel like that's Anna went towards girl.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's her beat.
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing I've reshared about it is that it brings me back to that image of Timothy Shalame and the galaxy pants on a red carpet for like It's like the Nymphomaniac premiere because we've talked about that on this very podcast and I maybe that's what the reference is I certainly doubt it but it to me that's what
[SPEAKER_00]: with a place I go to, so at least I appreciate that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was an internal callback.
[SPEAKER_01]: I, like, annually, but with, you know, she's done her thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do think she's a little overused, but her pension for, like, gray saturation is really fascinating to me, like, derogatory.
[SPEAKER_01]: The coloring on Timothy is so bad, like, it looks like, um, it's like the wash on a piece of film or, like, filmmaking before you color grade it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's what it looks like.
[SPEAKER_01]: It looks like the first draft of an image.
[SPEAKER_00]: it looks like it hasn't really been adequately edited and then like also like she has sort of a history of really not knowing how to photograph people with like darker skin tones because I don't know her like neglect of well it's kind of up but also she does just actually make everyone look great it's just like a widespread making people look great thing that just like obviously doesn't work for everybody but I don't I don't know if it's necessarily like not knowing and more like an
[SPEAKER_01]: Like she likes this exaggeration.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's giving Tim Burton, yes, which worked really well for her during that Tim Burton era.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like Alice Wonderland.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really bad, but I kind of just appreciate it for how Go Shoulders.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I am a little bit like, okay, Vogue has gone low culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe, maybe this is a conspiracy planned out to make...
[SPEAKER_00]: Chloe Mal seemed really a good choice as her successor.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, we're going to really leave it on a weird note.
[SPEAKER_00]: So anything she does will seem like an improvement.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just can't imagine and I went to her taking part in.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean like
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, when I first saw it, I was kind of like, did Anna win tour kind of like, guide.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought it was close.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was how I was like, did Ganty get sabotaged?
[SPEAKER_00]: Which would be really fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, it's also like, you know, Tim Mieslake only the third man to ever be on a solo cover of Folk.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like all around like a pretty wild decision, but also a kind of feels perfect for Timothy Chalome as he is in this current moment, which is like annoying random and just sort of hard to pin down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, erratic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm really like, I find him a little insufferable at the moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really like this whole like legitimize me as an actor phase because I think he's really acting erratic in order to
[SPEAKER_00]: for people to take him seriously.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I think he's trying to pull like a classic Hollywood stunt.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like just be a theater kid, but what does this weird like performance art type of shit that you keep trying to pull?
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like be a theater kid, that's fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're doing great.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you see the Marty Supreme?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like this PR stunt where they like, it's like A24's YouTube channel released a zoom call between Timmy and like the Marty Supreme team or he's being like really insufferable bro kind of vibes and then it's like this PR stunt.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the video is named Marty Supreme.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, like back end call or like logistics call or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're really trying to do that, like, go back to that original A24 marketing, X-Malkin' a type shit, but I'm like, oh, it all feels really exhausting to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Marty's Supreme, like, Supreme Huddies, did you have you seen that?
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen that.
[SPEAKER_01]: The merch, and yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think also the fact that it's, like, a saffordy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's a Josh or Benny saffordy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think Benny just did the smashing machines.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm assuming it's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I think of this saffordy, where there's, and I think about, like, book good time and
[UNKNOWN]: You
[SPEAKER_00]: Cool guy slash film bro vibe that kind of went with the marketing and like everything around that Like it's not just that you're into your film boy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like I don't know how to describe it There's like a type of guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember Pete Davidson wearing a t-shirt of Robert Pattinson's face from good time On like a late night show and like being really annoying about it and I'm like yeah, that also lines up with like all this Timothy shallow maple shit And I'm like oh my god.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like a dilution of the brand like stalk to me to me to me
[SPEAKER_00]: Stuff stuff stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think only a man's career would benefit from him acting more insane.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, totally.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, because we'll be at the home male genius type shit and like the male actor about the, like, same as Justin Butler.
[SPEAKER_01]: Justin Butler did not get really many hits on his brand for being the most annoying person of the world after Elvis.
[SPEAKER_01]: Although one of the armists also didn't for blond and like, I'm having trouble for giving her.
[SPEAKER_01]: But also, I mean, no, both movies are pretty odd.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, in other news, Zoroan met Trump.
[SPEAKER_01]: We know this is delayed news, but like, truly one of the most fascinating things that's ever happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you be Zoroan, mom, don't you write it out?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, how do you go?
[SPEAKER_00]: I just sat there in front of cameras and called the President of the United States a fascist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he had then Trump was like, per bitch, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm just like...
[SPEAKER_00]: in love with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trump has such a big crush.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I want to meet Zara and I want to feel this magnetism that he clearly has.
[SPEAKER_00]: That must be a wisdom guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: He already is obviously on the screen, but in person, I'm like, what the hell?
[SPEAKER_01]: It is fascinating because like Trump and Bernie were during that like original election like during this parallel primaries that were happening like both of them had this kind of rogue spirit like somewhat anti-establishment like coming in from the side coming in from left field you know and Zoro and also has that is the other end of the spectrum but it is like I think Trump values this kind of like rogue
[SPEAKER_01]: energy.
[SPEAKER_00]: A thousand percent eight makes sense and I think what they were really getting to is the fact that there is a section of his base that voted for Zoro on like, there are Maga from Mamdoni guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of their Instagram accounts come up on my feed for some reason, like yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are people and I think it's because at the end of the day, what's becoming more and more clear is that people are concerned about affordability.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are both candidates that ran on platforms concerned with affordability before they were really about being a part of a political establishment, like that, trumping everything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just makes a lot of sense and I also think like we're
[SPEAKER_01]: upcoming elections Just because less like a disingenuous, but yes, yeah, it's like not not actually inherently pop because I feel like populism It's kind of in somewhat inherently like just but yeah, yeah Like use what I mean is like using the language of the people so I'm like using a lot of the approach.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah Well, because everything's about class politics and we've been distracted by this fucking stupid culture war and it's like that's not actually real and Class politics aren't and that's the way forward.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not that Trump ever actually like adhere to any of those class
[SPEAKER_00]: But he convinced a lot of people that he wasn't even convinced, yeah, yeah I first when I I just saw like oh, he met Trump and like it was just a picture of him smiling like Or whatever like standing like to jump I was like oh god, how does this guy survive this like what is this gonna do like and then when I actually saw the content of what went down I was like fuck he did it again Oh, he kind of looked like a little grandmother and that like he just looked like little grandma like sitting in her little chair and her like
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean like also you know Trump is like he's that is a senile man I'm pretty certain so like also his responses were on it's like it's not even that Bathling I'm like yeah you met like this charming young guy and you talked about New York of course You're delighted he's like yes dear yes dear
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, it's crazy for plexing.
[SPEAKER_01]: God, catch us 10 years ago saying any of this, like the timelines of crazy that we're like, that was actually extra crazy, because no one's perplexed by anything anymore, but that was truly perplexing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And no, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Mr. President's gonna be coming up quite a bit in this episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: And speaking of, I'm Maya.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Hannah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is rehash, a podcast about the internet phenomena that strike a nerve in our culture only to be quickly forgotten, but we think are due for a revisiting.
[SPEAKER_01]: This season is about communication on the internet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Online, we may have shot the shit, but have we also shot the messenger?
[SPEAKER_01]: If you like our show and do want to hear more from us, you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com-re-podcast where we have bonus episodes and early access to our regular programming.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't want to join the Patreon, feel free to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple podcast because that helps us out a lot and it just dissociated into oblivion during that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Allie McBeal, one of the most iconic shows of the 90s, follows a high-flying Boston lawyer named Allie, as she navigates the balance of her perfect career and less than perfect love life.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was also a show known for its mumble core dialogue and the integration of less than perfect computer graphic imagery, whenever they wanted to express how Ali was feeling at any given moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it shouldn't have come as a shock then, in one episode from 1997, when Ali is dithering about her biological clock and hallucinates a pixelated dancing baby in her living room, who dances to the tune of Hooked on a Feeling.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know the one that's like, who got chak chak chak chak, that one.
[SPEAKER_01]: The whole arc is that Ali is at first befuddled by the baby but then eventually.
[SPEAKER_01]: As she comes to accept her clock decides to dance along with it to like a little fair style rendition of the song because like of course.
[SPEAKER_01]: Except it was a shock because the baby is fucking horrifying.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like
[SPEAKER_01]: transparent and gray and pixelated and has eyes that don't move and was actually the brainchild of software company called Autodesk who created it as a sample file for customers who wanted to know more about Autodesk's animation plugins.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's creators made it kind of blank for the purpose of allowing people to alter it the way they wanted to and it worked because the baby became a superstar in the chain mail and chat room circuits.
[SPEAKER_01]: See, hand is episodes about those
[SPEAKER_01]: And, eventually, crawled out of the digital realm and made its way onto Ali McBeal to everyone's regret.
[SPEAKER_01]: And while it's hard to say for sure, it's likely that the dancing baby was the first internet meme.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whoa.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hannah, care to illuminate our listeners with a definition of what a meme is.
[SPEAKER_00]: it's something that is repeated and sort of like remixed and perpetuated in this context online as it gets like shared along and there's like like new variations added to it and such.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was great, Mama.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, perpetuation, remixing, that's all there.
[SPEAKER_01]: You hit on a lot of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Allow me to get more specific.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the word meme was coined by an evolutionary biologist named Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene.
[SPEAKER_01]: The word meme can be traced to the French word for same or the Greek word for Mimo Mai.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in this book Dawkins is looking for a word to describe a unit of cultural transmission.
[SPEAKER_01]: So likely it was derived from the word phoneme, which means the smallest unit of sound in speech.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's this amazing book from 1999 by the scholar named Susan Blackmore called the me machine where she kind of elaborates on Dawkins Point by saying that a major distinguishing facture of human beings is our ability to imitate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like from babyhood we're imitating our parents, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They'll be like, be capable and you're like, be capable or whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she says that when we imitate someone, that thing we're imitating gets passed on to other people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this can be endless.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of similar to what we're seeing in our chain mail episode with folklore, like folklore, and sometimes be a somewhat longer version of a meme.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can think about it like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it can also be a tune or a catchphrase, fashion trends, ceremonies, games, anything that's sort of like a transmission of knowledge or behavior between people that can transmit basically forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Hannah, based on what we've discussed, what do you think is the key difference between chain mail and memes,
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the image aspect of it?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, because I think chain mail could just be an image that you send in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess any like a meme is a kind of folklore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, oh, is the remix part?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes!
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the customizable element of the meme.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, the meme is viral, but it's also importantly like the baby malleable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the most important feature of it is that it mutates and morphs.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when we think of the internet meme specifically, these are memes kind of like visual your worms almost that can be altered again and again and again and again, both visually but also in their meaning, you know, so like if you have, let's say someone tweets something, someone could quote tweet it and literally just put, you know, I dash, you know, like when people were like, I-
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's completely changes the meaning of the original thing that they're sharing, you know, like it can be that small so they're extremely powerful and I like this quote by this guy Andrew Price from memes.com who described them as quote an idea that rips through the public consciousness and I just made such an impressed face.
[SPEAKER_01]: was like, true that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the meme format as we know it now is pretty classic.
[SPEAKER_01]: Usually it's a picture associated with some sort of caption, both of which can be altered to change context.
[SPEAKER_01]: This format was actually traced back to as early as the 1920s from this British periodical where it's like,
[SPEAKER_01]: two cartoons.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like on one side is like a sexy dandy guy on the left with the caption.
[SPEAKER_01]: How you think you look when a flashlight is taken and then a way less detailed kind of like sillier drawing of a man on the right with the caption.
[SPEAKER_01]: How you really look.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ha ha.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's from this like 1921 edition of a satirical magazine from Iowa University called the judge, and they would actually like regularly publish these like expectations versus reality images.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it is considered the earliest known version of the internet meme format because it was done with like regularity essentially, but do you want to take a guess where the meme originated on the internet?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, would it be chat rooms?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, where else, um, okay, okay, pre-dating that or post?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, weirdly, like, in its current format, no, not pre-dating that.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is like pretty hard to say exactly where this current meme format began, but like, research is pointing to the idea that basically it really morphed into its current form on 4chan.
[SPEAKER_01]: For a chain is kind of the perfect birthplace for the meme when you think about it because it follows the super dark witty and interface where people are competing for engagement.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so if your post is engaged with a lot, then it goes to the top of the feed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if it isn't, then it falls into obscurity at the bottom.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like you want to be making stuff that's going to get up there.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to make stuff that's like going to resonate with people, be relatable, etc.
[SPEAKER_01]: So memes in the form of like image macros, so, you know, that captioned image, were really useful for quickly grabbing people's attention on the site and condensing a point into like a visual sound bite, like a visual earworm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember some of these really early image macro formats?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, early memes?
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like the earlier memes that I can think of are probably like actually in like the lineage of memes a bit later, but I'm thinking like condescending really wonka, yeah, like bad luck Brian, that baby who's kind of going, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I don't remember though.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's like a baby and he's like, Oh, like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's kind of...
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also the drunk baby one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's like, I guess, like, Lull Cats?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those, I mean, Rick Roll, that was a meme.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, those are the main ones that, like, that are coming to mind from, like, that early days of the meme.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, and that's exactly what I'm thinking of.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, immediately what came to mind was like bad luck, Brian.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's horrible stick figures.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you remember?
[SPEAKER_01]: It was an ESA meme page, and it was like so stupid.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a meme page for McGill too that I thought was actually pretty good and funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love following the ones that are like, and we'll get into this book.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love following the ones that are about like your specific environment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like Montreal meme pages, I love back in the day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Toronto ones, like, there are these guys who run a podcast called Cold Pod High Cold Pod in Toronto and I feel like they kind of blew up also for making like really specific memes about Toronto culture in a way that felt yeah it was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's also somewhat more recent ones, but like distracted boyfriend expanding brain like the galaxy brain ones or like the they don't know party meme We like that one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, Drake hotline bling.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, Drake hotline bling like yes, no Yeah, so yeah, you're just a little be these like very eye-grabbing images with like the older ones kind of had like white impact font on them And originally they were supposed to be super
[SPEAKER_01]: relatable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ideally, there's like a Cinderella meme too.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was like kind of like girl me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there was the the most interesting man in the world twine, where it's like, I don't always blah, blah, but when I blah, blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's like a malady one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very simple.
[SPEAKER_01]: Feel like early internet, simple days, you know, horror, viral video of like cat throwing up that type shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Totally.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the public is dying to know Hannah.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's your favorite meme?
[SPEAKER_00]: right now my favorite meme or not right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think my favorite meme is the meme that I probably like quote in my head the most which is it's a girl.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a photo from Facebook and it's a girl with a bag of chips on top of her head.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's in like a convenient store and a caption just says, I love her.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's so crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so silly but I like think it all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be like I love her.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's so crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that's one of the one I quote the most.
[SPEAKER_00]: She does say this a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really had a deep impact on Hannah as a person.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hannah does love.
[SPEAKER_01]: It really speaks to you as a person though, because I feel like you do surround yourself with someone insane people and girls like insane women.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you love to be like, my friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like when your friend does something, we're like, I love her.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's so crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll precisely.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's usually used sarcastically, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, that's the, the whole point is that this woman is not really doing anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they're easy, she's going to buy a chip on her head.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but if like someone online posted something that they think is like them being super epic or like random or awkward, it's like then you respond with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't know that one I think is,
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're saying I like go piss girl.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's probably the other one I say the most because it's just fun to tell people to go piss girl and I Feel like those are my main ones.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, those are good ones.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have had a girl a group on the culture for sure
[SPEAKER_01]: Minor a little bit more like a random core like I really just like a really just like she's so crazy you know precisely and bitch I'm one of the crazy that your friends with but I love like one that's kind of like an image I simply could never explain and then a really strange caption beside it so one of my favorites is um it's like funny because it is just like actually just a screenshot of like something from like I think it's like an antique show but essentially it's it's it's I'm pulling it up because I just want to explain it it's basically
[SPEAKER_01]: This picture of this like somewhat collic I doll with like a snaggle tooth and like a little bonnet and it's quite terrifying looking.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's from some sort of like auction show or antique show and the caption under it on the show says, Oh, it missed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You mean dad's doll, $40 to $70.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess someone just had to like name this doll and that's what they name turn and it really does.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just spoke to me on such a spiritual level when I saw, like, I, it lives inside my mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is my as favorite.
[SPEAKER_00]: Although, what is the customizable element of that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what do you apply when Mr. Yumi dad to?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't really fully know how people have customized it, but it has like, traveled.
[SPEAKER_01]: The introvers is like like the internet like I feel like it's used as almost like a response to things Like I've seen people post it was like a response Yeah, these are like less easily customizable like it or like then I'll do my esoteric
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but they like, they have traveled.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the customizable thing is that they are used to kind of like respond in different context to things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's what's customizable.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you don't customize the actual image, but you're customizing like it's usage.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like what it means when you're, whatever, the context.
[SPEAKER_01]: This one is a picture of like, it's like a batty, like extremely chesty woman, computer graphic on the phone, but with Jimmy Neutron's head and the caption is the authorities have
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess it's from a video game, but then Jimmy Trump's head is on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just, I don't know, I can't explain, like, it really, again, the visual, your worm thing, but those memes have just, they're living there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, they will not go away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fair of the many years I've known my year, like, way missed to you, me dad, has been, like, very present.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I didn't actually need her to answer this question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I already knew that was her favorite meme.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's like very much like a fundamental part of her being.
[SPEAKER_01]: To be honest, I've just had the idea that I'm an address officer for Halloween next year because that feels like integral to my being.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you need to be in the same city as me and we need to be Shelley Duval and Susie Spasik.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can't talk about this again, Hannah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we've talked about Halloween in every episode of this season.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, I know, I know, but like I'm just saying it out there so the people know my year and I are going to be in the same country for Halloween.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, our hair is going to be perfect for this costume.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, I'm just kidding.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just really want to be snaggled to install.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I also want to be... You can do two costumes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hate forgetting this isn't a bonus episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm being kind of like extra loose in an owing right now and I need to
[SPEAKER_01]: I also follow a lot of like cynical meme and like shit posting accounts like I don't know I follow like on a downward spiral which is like this meme account that's I don't know It's it has like 40 admins.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really like following speaking of like environmental like location specific But I love no lead a dirt bag which is just like a New York specific
[SPEAKER_01]: It's gonna count that makes fun of like guys and so home-asically.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a London equivalence, one-to-called sock house meeting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I've seen that one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and then the other is a real housewives of Clapton.
[SPEAKER_00]: I followed that for a bit, yeah, but then I was like, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just can't relate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that, well, sometimes I'm like, okay, I'm like, I feel good to get it where I'm like, I kind of get that, but then sometimes I'm like, you are really just like taking a bunch of commodity goods and like putting them on here and being like, isn't this a type of person?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, tabby girlfriend, gracewater boyfriend, name of trendy bar, name of trendy cafe, my vibes right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, what is this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Was this a comment on something?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this a critique of something?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this supposed to be funny?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you're just observing things that are trendy.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I completely agree and like I interviewed my friend for this essay and she was talking about how she like had recently read As supposedly fun thing I'll never do again by David Foster Wallace, which I am never eating Where she was like, I realized that like I am so layered and irony and she was like, so I ended up having to like Unfollow all these like niche meme accounts because
[SPEAKER_00]: It just like become for everyone in a way that's like, okay, well, then everything's cringe and you can't like nothing feel safe or sacred anymore You can't just like be yourself nothing feels original and like nothing is original, but I just don't need to be made aware of it I guess yeah, that's actually what triggered me to do the exact same thing I used to follow a lot of really niche ones back when I was in my early 20s and then I unfollowed them because I was like, god, this is just so fucking negative and like so judgmental
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fine to critique things that we like see as like trends, but to a certain extent I just becomes acknowledging things.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're like literally just pointing stuff out and like it's not clever These are just observations, but you're not building on them.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're just like people wear that right now People go to that place and people watch this show and sometimes those are the same people Isn't that a crazy type of person?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like no
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, one, one I really like is now it's called Doom Scroll forever, but it used to be called like North West MCM like wholesale memes or whatever It was run by this guy named Herman I think he's from like Seattle or something, but it's it's kind of him crashing out about like gentrification But in like the funniest way possible where he's just like really roasting like much where's but he really is crashing out like he's like
[SPEAKER_01]: He'll make memes about like his recent breakup and the funniest way possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I don't know it feels like doing that But with like almost like a subtle political angle, but using irony to kind of get that through which we will talk about so Okay, on a second I'm putting a pen in it put a pen in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also Joan of Arca our girl
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of like esoteric, like very simple strips down memes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's like a photo of one adult rape and like a caption, like general captions.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like kind of girl meme.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of missed the era of meme where you were just like, look at this picture of this person doing something and like just writing something above it, where it's just like, let me use this person's face as like a placeholder for an emotional reaction and then like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, so I feel like you don't see that as much anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: What, like, bad luck Brian?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but I'm like bring back Brian.
[SPEAKER_00]: Big but Brian.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I need to get it together.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a real episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone needs to be a her in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Guys, this is what you'd be missing though, if you're not on our Patreon.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, like, I don't know if you're in tight.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you're a Lord, but... Did you only get your money's worth?
[SPEAKER_01]: Guys, your money's worth mama.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to hear me talking baby talk?
[SPEAKER_00]: All it is, are coming up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just say it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, as you can hear me talking baby talk and Hannah having health anxiety and that's kind of like her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, I won't do that too much on the pod.
[SPEAKER_00]: Although you guys missed a riveting encounter with a spider on the last phone.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is horrible, this is horrible, bro.
[SPEAKER_01]: It kind of feels like you also just like bat-eyed me with that because in the next day I found like the largest cockroach known to humankind in my house and I was like, no, truly horrible and I felt like, yeah, I felt like you kind of sent a curse my way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bitch, you live in New York City.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know they're everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: You promised yourself, first my damn self.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like anytime we talk about some sort of evolution on the internet, it always starts with us whole, you know, everything felt so liberating back then, tight beat.
[SPEAKER_01]: This shows so nostalgic for stupid shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is kind of no different.
[SPEAKER_01]: In its early days there was kind of like a utopian and transformative character to the meme or the way at least the meme was understood.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was considered like what you could call like an open work.
[SPEAKER_01]: This kind of authorless art where ideas could be transmitted freely and super fast.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is just really great dialogue from art news about the meme and dataism, where they say the meme is, quote, related to the utopian thinking of some members of the early 20th century avant-garde that there would be a progressive death of the author, as the artist's hand an individual voice became less important.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's this thing with like unlimited collective potential.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the best part is most people can make a meme because you know, all you really need is Microsoft Paint to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it just feels like very accessible, very open.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's coming together to make something that kind of has like,
[SPEAKER_01]: A kind of is just for pleasure, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like you're like making each other laugh.
[SPEAKER_01]: And over the 2010s, it started to expand beyond that typical, like, relatable or observational content and actually into more niche forms.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind of like the meme pages that we were just describing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember Galsh Shakira?
[SPEAKER_00]: See, that's someone that I unfollowed because I was like, earlier vibes are like too negative.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, no, it was just like, okay, mind you, this is a pre-Barbie movie, pre-little woman Greta Gerwig.
[SPEAKER_00]: She literally put up Lady Bird and then she made this, she, I think it was her and if it's not her, I do apologize, but I swear it was her and it was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: This is also right after Hilary Clinton, I think, lost the election, which obviously, like, don't love Hilary Clinton, but it was like a weird time where people were like, obviously, it's so sucked that Donald Trump got elected that first time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she's just like, post of this meme that was like, I bet Hilary Clinton thinks that Greta Growek is so girl boss.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, Greta Growek has just been a ladybird.
[SPEAKER_01]: To be fair, she took fully predict that though.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, but I'm just saying like in the moment I was just like, okay, I don't know there was something but like following these like feminist meme pages Where I was like okay, but you're also like cynical and like I don't know I was just like I just felt like there's something about irony culture that was like really getting to me at that point because I was like this is like
[SPEAKER_00]: I've always felt a little bit adverse to like irony or like heavy doses of irony.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a very earnest person, probably too earnest, and I can take a joke.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can take sarcasm, but I was just like, it kind of felt like it was making impossible to enjoy stuff and then like making fun of people for politicizing things, but then also politicizing it at the same time by linking those things together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it just kind of felt like,
[SPEAKER_00]: This empty critique where it was like yeah, there's like mainstream feminism is flawed and like but I don't know It just felt like she was projecting bullshit Sorry, this is I don't know this woman and I maybe wasn't her there was a time where if you came for Greta you're done with Hannah
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't just the Greta aspect of it though it was just like this is a feminist meme page but also like if women enjoy things that like they consider feminist or something or like enjoy or appreciate like the work of other women that's also kind of lame because someone selling you that woman and it was like she'd made one movie for a 24 yeah I could see that more post Barbie but definitely not pre Barbie come on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, this is like what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also like, this is pre sort of like TikTok.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone being overly precious about things made for women and like women artists.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was just like this period where I was like, I feel like women artists weren't getting any attention or Joe, and it just felt really lame to me to just go for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the name of being like a cool girl or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, I don't know, gosh, Shakira.
[SPEAKER_00]: Girl, it came from the heart and that's all the matters, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was not expecting this beef between you and Galshik here, but this is really interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then if it wasn't Galshik here, if it was a different boom page, I'm really sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're shooting blindly, you're shooting blindly now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's interesting what you say about irony here, because we'll talk about what you have to say about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So basically,
[SPEAKER_01]: Gostokira was this girl living in Montreal at the same time that I was living there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And basically, she's this like Latina woman at the time, she was in her 20s who made these like hyper-specific memes, like they'd usually feature Latina celebrities like Selena Gomez or Jennifer Lopez making weird facial expressions and then they'd have these like really long, esoteric captions that usually had like a feminist edge to them and usually sprinkled in some astrology too.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were just very like late 2010s type shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you describe and read this one?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's an image of J.Lo.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of smurking and looking to the side.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the caption says, when he says, ha ha my ex girlfriend was crazy and you know you must automatically translate that to ha ha my ex girlfriend was forced into playing an emotional game.
[SPEAKER_00]: in which I allowed my own insecurities and fear of commitment dictate how I treated her meaning that I led her to mistrust me by playing hot and cold with her affections or worse, causing her to respond in a way that might otherwise be deemed irrational as a crisis-induced tactic of emotional self-preservation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they tend to really not have punctuation, but I remember these, it's all coming back to me now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very long form, very specifically kind of like art-hode neurotic girl educated, like they would reference like scholars a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so I loved RIP and an Nicole Smith, who was always just like very similar academic work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then became like best friends with Suki Waterhouse for a minute, which was really random.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, so this is funny because like basically gosh, she's here a blue up and she do these like gallery shows and Montreal displaying her memes as art.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's a columnist at the LA Times now, which is pretty sick.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind of like a strategy columnist, I don't fully know, but yes, yeah, she got interviewed a lot of the time because people were starting to be like, you know, Ken memes be arts.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she has this quote where she says, quote, back in the day when people went to consume voodveal shows, it's entertainment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Theoretically, it's not supposed to be profound.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like you're reading Moby Dick or going to the opera.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's fascinating to me of a memes and what I've tried to do when I produce them is turn that on its head by taking a format that people don't think is going to be meaningful and using it to say meaningful things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So again, there was a lot of hope placed onto the meme at this point as being this ephemeral object that could spread information at warp speed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are many accounts that have been borne out of the Gauss-Chicura-type meme admins, like, you know, there's, again, Joe de Marca, who's doing these really high concept like minimalist memes.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was this one called Big Dog Socialism or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't find it when I went back for it, but it's a Canadian account that makes
[SPEAKER_01]: Doom scroll forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was also this whole group of meme accounts that ended in selectuals I don't know if you ever saw these.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the original one was like in selectuals and then there'd be like all different types of like Like branches of that That were also like high concept like shit post accounts
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, so I'd say like in the 2010s, we see a sort of intellectual elevation of the meme from like ha ha man face silly to like this is art, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a lot of scholarship on the idea of irony of this wave of memes as acting as a sort of like trojan horse for important political ideas because there's that sort of distance and humor attached to it that can be kind of disarming on top of the viral aspect as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind of like what I'm saying about Doom's girl with like the gentrification
[SPEAKER_01]: critiques shrouded in irony.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think often here is a pretty like obvious example of that and one of the earlier ones does it always land certainly not as evidenced with Hannah and Greta Gerwig.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I was just like it's not a political cause to think that something that lots of women like is dumb.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway not to be so annoying but there's like an absolutely offense.
[SPEAKER_01]: Me referencing friends in the office like oh god.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's an episode of the office where Oscars, like, they're watching some crazy event happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's some sort of police chase and then Oscars, like, he kind of critiques it and then Kevin's, like, believe in something man, like, that, that feels like this, you know, believe in something.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that kind of era felt like it was like really uncool.
[SPEAKER_00]: to earnestly care about something or to get behind something and I mean not that I think we've actually fully gotten out of that era definitely not perhaps it's gotten worse but I just remember at that time it felt like it was more like those in the note no to like not be so honest or something or it was just like felt like a very cool thing to sort of
[SPEAKER_00]: be critical of things in like this really blanket way, which I just think is boring.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're still in that, but Dasha just, you know, she's got to drop by her agent so apparently everyone's like, focus back, you know, so we'll see you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we'll see.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see.
[SPEAKER_01]: Though now I'd say we've reached the late stage of this kind of meme where these admins are now doing like the spoke branded meme content for like north face or like this one I follow just did one of it like it was like a partnership with square.
[SPEAKER_01]: The post was like critiquing again like the people who get their marches and where they're whatever fucking gorp core but then it was partnering with square like it was really confusing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, that's the other thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is the ones that are critiquing certain kinds of consumerism are then obviously making money by doing brand partnerships.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, you're not actually critics of consumerism.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are consumers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you just want to point out that you know about things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, a lot of the time of Spider-Man meme, it's like you are a creative director and so is everyone else.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I can't talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: I simply can't join this conversation because I kind of do the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But no, you're just having to make no the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it is kind of crazy seeing a meme and you're like, oh, this is just a meme and then you like go down to the caption.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, oh, no, it is not an ad.
[SPEAKER_00]: I refuse to engage with comedy content online that's like branded.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, honestly, obviously get your back whatever I don't care, but also I'm like, this isn't funny because it's not coming from the heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will lend credence to the concept of memes being art though because that should actually so hard to do and you do have to have a specific skills that to be able to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hannah and I like we've tried to make memes for our Instagram page which you know most people have and we can't like not part of my brain is not functioning so I do admire people who funny like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not fucking funny like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well I think we're funny in our own personal unique way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, definitely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let us know over funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the liberatory side of memes, but going back to Dawkins and the origins of the meme, why do you think that his book was called the selfish gene?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why selfish?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the strongest one is the one that like continues to perpetuate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like essentially, like, yes, I think it's a facet of it, for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are critiques we made about Dawkins theory, but yeah, it is kind of like evolutionary biology.
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically, like Blackmore says that one of the key qualities of a meme is that it's going to spread around indiscriminately regardless of whether or not it's useful, neutral, or negative.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dawkins' whole idea is that genes are going to, like you're saying, perpetuate, like propagate onto the next generation, whether or not they're harmful.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Think of it my mom passing down her early graying hair gene to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I don't deserve that, but here I am with this or like you know, worst genes like someone being predisposed for dangerous illnesses.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so Blackmore says that of course memes don't care about where they go because like genes they're self-ish.
[SPEAKER_01]: The whole point is that they have to keep moving and mutating like a really powerful virus which kind of changes the whole conception of the meme being inherently benign or
[SPEAKER_01]: sometimes it's actually quite malignant.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really cool in all that everyone is the author of the mean, but like every other episode we're going to talk about why this whole idea of like democratic on the internet kind of fucking blows actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think we really see that play out in the story of Pepe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me tell you the story of Pepe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of the information I got from this is from this really amazing documentary called Fields Goodman from 2020, which you should all go watch after this or before it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It all started with Matt Fury, who's this soft spoken little cutie who back in the day worked inside the toy department of a San Francisco thrift store and spent his time there drawing comics.
[SPEAKER_01]: In real life like growing up, he'd always been drawing frogs, but peppy the frog came to be on Microsoft Paint as part of like a low-fi illustrated series called Boys Club that he created, which is a little bit like the high-chinks of these different anthropomorphic characters.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mostly based on Furie's own life experiences with his own roommates and
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, it's full of like fart jokes and whatever, masculine humor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pete posts some of these comics online and basically Pepe took off when body builders probably what will now call gym cells.
[SPEAKER_01]: Took this one frame from one of the comics where Pepe is peeing with his pants fully down and like the door, the bathroom door open and is basically explaining to his friend who's like his friends like you and Pepe is like,
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels good, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: They made this into an image macro and it started circulating and being placed on image boards and made its way onto four-chan where Pepe was read drawn with a sad expression on his face and became this symbol for like in-cells or loners as a kind of like reclamation of their own weirdness and loser dumb.
[SPEAKER_01]: They interview this in-cell on it and he describes it in the documentary as finally being okay with checking out and living in your mom's basement and being like,
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Peppy was kind of like, at this point, like, the sad Keanu or Ben Affleck memes used to evoke sadness or melancholy.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people in 4chan didn't know who Peppy was created by, and quickly it got so popular that it spread off a 4chan and into more mainstream channels.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then it got taken up by Normies, which, in this case, Normies is just a short hand for women, and became this like makeup tutorial trend where girls would like paint their faces to look like Pepe.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so basically in retaliation, the guys on 4chan started this thing that they called the beta uprising, where they declared like World War 3 on Normies and began to make Pepe memes like super violent and offensive as possible to shake people off of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it would be like Pepe as the hijacker during 9-11 or like Hitler Pepe or whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: The most incendiary shit you can think of.
[SPEAKER_01]: They also started putting him in images with like Elliott Roger who we remember as the Insel who went on shooting spree back in 2014 and murdered a bunch of people who then became an icon among the black pill Insels.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, by the time 2016 came around, Pepe was redrawn again from a sad face to a smug face, kind of like a more ironic self-aware expression, always placed into this offensive imagery, and the documentary explains that Donald Trump was the personification of this iteration of Pepe, this new smug iteration, because he was like a real-life troll, and because he speaks in
[SPEAKER_01]: sound bites, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because of this, the people on 4chan take a liking to him because he felt like he was rogue and misunderstood during his campaign trail, kind of like a provocative outsider.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they start deliberately making memes of Trump to counteract the liberals because it makes them feel like they're kind of a part of this insurgency or rebel group, you know, this guy's coming from the outside within.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we talked about at the beginning of the episode so just I don't know imagine like a bunch of lonely Disaffected losers finally feeling like they have power, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Trump eats it all up and ends up retweeting a meme of himself as smug Pepe and this is basically what won him The disenfranchised male vote like he really like he he was at that point winning over these like younger men who would Turn to maga in a way that like the establishment Republicans weren't
[SPEAKER_01]: Pepe ends up getting added to the anti-deformation leagues list of hate symbols, so basically becoming like an internet swastika.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Matt Fury is obviously fucking horrified.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like genuinely the sweet little guy who just wants to make children's books and now one of his characters is like a hate symbol and his name is also on the anti-deformation website page for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the movie is basically about his efforts to win Pepe back as a symbol for peace.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, but Pepe was so far gone at this point.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Fury's efforts feel super futile, and this is really a crisis of all their shit right, because ultimately Fury can't fully lay claim to the image now that it's been transformed, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been mutated and it's spread as much as it has.
[SPEAKER_01]: At one point, he even tries to kill Pepe diogenically within the comics and have all the roommates like Attent his funeral.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was curious, Hannah, like, do you think it's possible for a meme to die?
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because once you've created it and you've decided to share it and put it into that ecosystem and make it available to the masses, you don't own that anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the whole point.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's open-source.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's democratized.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, it's not something you can exert control over.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why no one knows who created memes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not something that gets attached to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: it's not yours to keep that unfortunately that's like the risk that you run I guess it's more difficult because Pepe emerged from something else like it emerged from his own like kind of artistic work but they kind of all emerged from something else right like Balik Brian is just some guys foot any foot at right
[SPEAKER_00]: But in this context, it is he the one that started perpetuating him as more of a meme, or was it like he was creating?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, in that case, that's horrible, and that sucks for him, because it's not like he was like the one who decided to turn Pepe into a meme.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you put imagery onto the internet, it's really, really hard to lay any ownership over it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard and I was racking my brain as to like, is it possible at all for a meme to just go away?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, I do think it's nearly impossible for a meme to truly die.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like kind of is just impossible.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the only way for it to kind of go away is becoming obsolete, like losing cachet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those early image macros, for example.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they're not really around anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not circulating the same way.
[SPEAKER_01]: They kind of exist in like internet archive more than anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: but we probably will reach a point where they become cool again, you know, and they'll come back and so it's hard to say, but I do think that's the only way for it to go with.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about Taylor Armstrong, from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, who literally girl.
[SPEAKER_00]: She became a meme, it's like woman yelling at Kat, it's her distressed,
[SPEAKER_00]: People who don't watch the real housewives don't realize that that is a clip from her yelling with these women who are confronting her over like their suspicions at her husband is physically abusive to her Which he was and then later committed suicide
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, and it's from the darkest chapter of this woman's life, but I've listened to interviews with her, where she's like, you know, obviously the context of this is horrible, but like you can't control being a meme, like you kind of just have to embrace it, like what else are you going to do, you as the person who's been magnified, it's beyond your control, and I guess like it's the same on it's your artistic output, like people are going to take from things what they're going to take from things.
[SPEAKER_00]: But whatever, like sick individual who did watch the real housewives took that green grab and decided to make it a meme, burden hell.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, you know, people who perpetuate it, it's like, they don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, it's an image.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, becomes this open source thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think memes generate violence?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or does real world violence get absorbed into memes?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what comes first, I guess, what affects the other?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like always really skeptical about the idea of blaming any media product for human behavior because it tends to usually be human-made atrocities that we'd like decide to blame the media for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like of course, it becomes a scapego.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like not only that, but obviously memes are really powerful modes of communication.
[SPEAKER_00]: but at the same time, not powerful enough to convince someone who wasn't going to commit an act of violence to then commit that act of violence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps the memes are more of an artifact from an internet culture that is having an effect on an impressionable human being and it's coming out of certain rhetoric and it's part of something bigger, but no,
[SPEAKER_00]: could induce violence.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, to me, it's kind of hard to tell, and it isn't definite, obviously.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, yeah, we don't want to get into the, oh, Marilyn Manson is what gave way to call him line or anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I do think they can be powerful.
[SPEAKER_01]: So during Trump's campaign, Pepe started being called Kek, which became this almost like spiritual, white supremacist movement that attempted to make Hillary Clinton collapse in public.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they believed they succeeded when she actually eventually did.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the documentary, they interviewed this occultist who talks about this concept of meme magic, which is essentially the idea that within these complex digital networks, the meme can become so powerful used by so many people having little distinct point of origin and moving so so quickly that it can impact the real world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was a lot of talk during this meme more era that these papay memes are what put Donald Trump The guy who originally like no one took seriously in office Obviously we know there were like a ton of factors that played a get him in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, you know one being at the Electoral Colleges rigged and then he didn't actually get in there on the first place
[SPEAKER_01]: but it's hard to deny that sheer momentum of his face and sound bites online combined with this more youth culture slaying and imagery like Pepe were very much working in his favor.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't necessarily think that like the image itself
[SPEAKER_01]: has a direct correlation towards violence, but I think the sheer ubiquity of an image and the fervor around it can incite people to do, like I think it can, I think what Pepe did was like embolden a disenfranchised group that was prone to violence to actually like move towards something.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't think it's the actual image, but I do think the power of like the ubiquity of something.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think we can like ignore it almost.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that also there's something to be said about humor being used as a decentralization tactic, where it's especially the kind of humor that often evoked with memes, it's called it's detached, it's ironic, and so it presents serious things with this sort of covering of
[SPEAKER_00]: not taking it seriously, but like, once you've been exposed to that enough, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it has a kind of a weird effect on how you relate to that subject matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there is a power of like a mediated gaze.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like seeing the world filtered through social media, filtered through, yeah, like meme culture, filtered through video games.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, and I think like I always have complicated feelings about like even some of the like debates about like video games or like movies and like how the influence people obviously I don't think that they're helpful like I don't think I think some shooter-based video games obviously I have not had like positive effects on people who might be otherwise who might already be inclined to that kind of behavior
[SPEAKER_00]: I think memes function in a different way where they just present these things as jokes to the point where maybe someone doesn't necessarily, well someone as in like a being who is vulnerable and like maybe susceptible to something like this, a certain type of person might then continue to sort of not take this concept seriously.
[SPEAKER_00]: to the extent that maybe they act out.
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, I just think that it's a factor in its future culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: It speaks to like, chat rooms or people are probably making other jokes about this, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's something to be said also about memes being like a language, like being some sort of fluency of like imagery.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's image-based language.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that can also be quite powerful.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if you're speaking through the image,
[SPEAKER_00]: When you think about like propaganda techniques and and the importance of like imagery there I mean it makes sense I think if you like pre internet memes propaganda is often like
[SPEAKER_00]: used as examples of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to ask how much tech companies are playing a role here, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, four-chand is a pretty ad hoc platform, but Peppy was circulating like crazy on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as well at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's this essay from this book called Post Memes, a Seizing the Memes of Production, and well, where the authors are like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Underneath the apparently free floating world of circulating texts, images, memes, there is an asymmetry of information.
[SPEAKER_01]: The means to produce data is decentralized to us, but the means to collect and process that data is decentralized to the proprietors of the platform base services we use.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was talking to a friend recently who brought up this really good point.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was like, why was the Charlie Kirk video able to circulate and stay up the way it did?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, how did it bypass community guidelines when like the outline of a nipple can get taken down almost immediately?
[SPEAKER_01]: And he, his old conspiracy theory was like he thinks the big tech companies kept it up on purpose.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they wanted that to spread.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you make of that?
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like people have pointed out in the past how somehow violent imagery is less censored than female nudity because we live in a fucked up culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, I'm not entirely sure about what the current state of the community guidelines are for a lot of these tech companies because they were really like playing fast and loose with that shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: around Trump's second election, or like the around the 20, 20 more election, all the like new Nazis there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, in Facebook too, though, like Mark Zuckerberg.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's like more historical for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I don't know kids manage to see all sorts of crazy shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't surprise me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess this is what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess like perhaps maybe there's also the argument that like that video is
[SPEAKER_00]: news like that is a piece of news.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not necessarily like the same as snuff like a snuff film being passed around or I don't think it's regarded as the same as the film being passed around would not be as advantageous for people as like a Charlie.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they're benefiting from the discord that that video creates.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like even though the video inherently goes against what their alleged community guidelines are.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then what are benefiting from that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like
[SPEAKER_00]: think about all the videos that we're passed around and perpetuated during BLM and like shared.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not making a political argument.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm making more of like a, like a malignancy argument.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're benefiting from the traffic so they're keeping it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're benefiting from the traffic and the malignancy of it and the discord.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like the, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I just think that the tech companies do also have a hand at play in the way that this stuff spreads and proliferates like us and multiplies and, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, of course.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, of course.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why they don't want to have a harsher guidelines for this kind of shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we all know that the most engaged with content is the content that like makes people angry or impassioned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, what's crazy?
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't seen the Katarly Kirk video.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like really avoided it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I haven't seen it either.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, see, that surprised me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like you're someone who's like seen so much more gruesome imagery than I have.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have like a more
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen it, I've also accidentally stumbled upon it once again the first viral video I saw on the internet was said I'm using it and I'm going to execute it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that was before the days of like-harsher community guidelines.
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw two parks, all topsy photo when I was a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, go ahead and see that.
[SPEAKER_00]: What if, like, psychologically damaged me, if I saw that?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's like, a logically damaged me.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've been going to talk about this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyways, sorry, we got a little bit off topic, but speaking of malignancy, there's this great essay in Spike by Travis Diel.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's about JD Vance's head.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you seen the JD Vance meme?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of one of my favorites.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, I should, don't know if I have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you send me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just look up, Jeezy pants, Jeezy pants, Jeezy pants, meme, ugh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh boy, it's so creepy, it's not the fault one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there's many iterations, but I think the original is more like he has a- It's like he has a kind of like an astronaut background, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like he- and he's kind of like smiling, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is horrendous.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so excited.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, the Jamie Vance meme is very simple.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's basically just an enlarginging of JD Vance's head.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it just looks like kind of like a puffyer version of it, and sometimes it has like an Afro.
[SPEAKER_01]: And kind of looks like a mollady guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's the whole point of it with like super piercing like BDI's.
[SPEAKER_01]: It took off around the time that Trump won and it became super ubiquitous and people started being like, hmm, does this mean that the left can meme after all?
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess remember that whole like fuckass discourse about which side of the political spectrum made better memes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or, yeah, like, who's funnier?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and people were like, oh, this is clearly lampooning JD Vance.
[SPEAKER_01]: But basically, the JD Vance head is kind of like a counterpoint to the papay meme, and it's more of like a reform.
[SPEAKER_01]: This ain't, you'd kill a victorian orphan.
[SPEAKER_01]: God, and more of a reflection of where we're at now in the stage of me making.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pepe became sort of like targeted, intentional meme that was meant to generate discord and like, ryle people up, or literally like, impact the outcome of elections.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this essay is basically talking about how there's no real distinct political affiliation to the JD Vance Head.
[SPEAKER_01]: Deals arguing that actually the meme just as easily could have been made by conservatives.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we might assume that it's supposed to be an insult, but based on the language and logic of those imageboard sites, it also could have been playful joshing or like lovingly poking fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says that originally back in 2016 Trump and Elon's kind of like tacky antics were considered tacky and undignified.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there was a sort of level of outrage around them, but now they've become the norm.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were people's thought they got Trump by pointing out Kofefe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like people milked the fuck out of Kofefe.
[SPEAKER_00]: They thought they were so clever.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, Kofefe wouldn't have even made the news this time around.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what that means also that there's kind of like a cringe element to older generations being really like obsessed with Trump being so whack and so we like they're very like focused Where's younger people are very much like he's kind of funny like that's the arrow we've entered into even if you don't like him
[SPEAKER_00]: The J.T.
[SPEAKER_00]: Vance meme kind of feels like Poo Lovato vibe.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a little Poo Lovato and like, yeah, the J.T.
[SPEAKER_01]: Vance head kind of is the symbol of that normal sea like.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know the intentions of the person who made Poo Lovato.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do they like Demi Lovato?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do they not?
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't really matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I feel like it returned to like manhead funny, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Diel goes, this was not the end of the head.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love this article.
[SPEAKER_01]: It had completed its transformation into a sublime hyper-object, interpolated with the universe.
[SPEAKER_01]: The energy of the head had returned, as a magnetic residue, to the online culture that spawned it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Had it been a protest, a tribute, a coup, it had been everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: The head of JD Vans reveling in its mutant will to power.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the aftermath of the head's explosive growth, even the head's enemies had to conceive that the head had emerged unscathed.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, it feels like in the years since 2016, the meme has almost returned to this neutral, maybe chaotic, neutral force, as opposed to an overtly malignant one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's still selfish, the JD Vance Head is like populating everyone's feeds and mutating constantly, but it's almost like, it's a political nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: or agnostic as deal puts it, it's like we've reached this stage of like shit posting where the meme can't be liberatory, it can't even be like explicitly malignant because both of those things are cringe and so instead it just means nothing at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also think that perhaps there's something about the nature of the meme that
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it was ever going to be liberatory.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it is way more set up to be malignant.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it is way more set up to cause harm because ultimately at the core of a meme is making fun of something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that perhaps like Snark is way more productive as like a means of making people act negatively than it is as like a means of inspiring positive action for people to like do better because people who make Snark coming from like a place of good intentions are usually people who are going to cap what they do they're like that's my effect which like I don't necessarily think people are gonna rally around a meme I guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess it kind of comes to a state of nature discussion at this point because it's like, you know, do we think human beings are predisposed towards selfishness and greed and evil?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are they predisposed towards being good and wanting to help each other in the tests for that?
[SPEAKER_01]: A little bit, like it just feels a little bit like it's such a blank canvas and it's so fast and it's so communal that it kind of does start to represent the human condition in a way that, you know, if we're really getting down to the basics of it,
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you just got so galaxy-brained meamed?
[SPEAKER_00]: Fuck!
[SPEAKER_01]: Also anyways, you know memes can kind of suck and shed out to our friend Max, who basically got meamed on a world star hip-hop like 10 years ago, for looking like Tiger, but like a white guy, so Max is now the white Tiger meme, and we have to say he's so much more than that, and so, shed out to Max, the patient zero of getting fucking rocked by the internet meme.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for watching.