'Lana del Rey, in other words, is a pop musician who has been manufactured as a pop musician. In that, she is no different from Beyoncé or Gaga or Madonna or any other musical act that has ever existed ever. Music is manufacturing. Music is performance. Music is spectacle. It lives and dies on its ability to combine sincerity and falsity in approximately appropriate ratios. And so, inevitably, it has introduced many an artist to the business end of the hype cycle. Lana, however, is different from her counterparts in one particular way: She found her current fame, such as it is, on YouTube. She is not a celebrity so much as she is an Internet celebrity. And, as an Internet celebrity, Lana-née-Lizzie is not just a product; she is a possession. She is, in a very real sense, ours. We, the Internet – we buzzing democracy of views and virality – created her. We have made her both what she is and more than what she is, aura and reproduction in one, a celebrity forged in the fire of 26 million YouTube views. We have, link by link, converted Lana del Rey, the person, into Lana del Rey, the meme. Which would be terrific for all involved – the singer gets her audience, the audience gets its singer – were it not for the fact that Lana del Rey is also, inconveniently, a person.'

'"As culture changes, it affects our brains, and as our brains change, that affects our culture. You can't separate the two," Berns says.'

'My goal as a website is to ‘be the ass hole who pointlessly interjects himself into the conversation’ without being as overtly annoying as ‘the ass hole who always pointless interjects himself into the conversation.’ Lana Del Rey is the perfect buzz topic, and I’ll never forget the times we shared in late 2k11 and early 2k12. I honestly do wish the best for her career, not because I have a rooting interest in her/care about her as a person, but because Lana Del Rey is an important search term to refer viewers to my website. I am not a writer. I am not a blogger. I am a content farmer. These words mean more to the Google robot than they do 2 u. There is nothing exciting about writing, tweeting, or sharing opinions. I do not want to inspire any one to follow me into this dark prison, surrounded by a pile of memes, while I must sort thru them and spin them as ‘meaningful’, ‘interesting’, or whatever else will generate a pageview.'

'Truthy is a research project that helps you understand how memes spread online. The data and statistics provided by Truthy are designed to aid in the study of social epidemics: How do memes propagate through the Twittersphere? What causes a burst of popularity? We also plan to use Truthy to detect political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution. While the vast majority of memes arise in a perfectly organic manner, driven by the complex mechanisms of life on the Web, some are engineered...'

'...if one subscribes (as we do) to the idea of an Anglo-American power elite that uses its tremendous, familial banking wealth to move society toward one-world government, then the evolution we are observing makes a good deal of sense. Money power makes all the difference; it provides a formidable incentive for self-censorship. Money determines fashion; wealthy donors fund museums and theatres that make "gate-keeper" decisions. The subtlety of money power—as brutal as it can be—is wondrous to behold. What was resisted in one generation is welcomed in the next. The beauty of money power is that once a theme, trend or cultural direction is set into place, it tends to propagate on its own. Only a relative few gatekeepers are needed. Establish a trend and the mimetic elements of human behavior take over. People are inevitably tribal. It is a survival instinct and a success-instinct. One sees what is successful and wishes to emulate it. Within this context almost anything can be nurtured.'

'On late July, 2010, a picture depicting a well-known Anonymous slogan being used by the Oregon Tea Party appeared on reddit. Since the Oregon Tea Party has chosen to claim Anon's modus operandi and—in effect—become one with the hivemind, Anon is encouraging oldfags to embrace the new "Anons" and 'join' them in their crusade against whatever it is they're against. If they want to be associated with Anon, Anon will associate the fuck out of them. All future Anon raids will be conducted not by ebaums but by the Oregon Tea Party be it epilepsy or uploading pr0n to YouTube. And don't forget to let the press (and anyone who'll listen) know that you're doing it for the lulz and for the Oregon Tea Party. Rules 1 & 2 are out the window on this raid and any future raids on behalf of the Oregon Tea Party. The whole world shall feel the wrath of <strike>ebaums</strike> the Oregon Tea Party.' -- OH SHIII

'...it is impossible for the power elite to muscle its fear-based promotions into success. Promotions by their nature are amorphous and suggestive. To attempt to create an atmosphere of credibility around a failed promotion through a declaratory procedure is foolishness. ...in order to maneuver the world in a certain direction, the elite needs to create dominant social themes. These are essentially frightening fictions intended to panic people into giving up wealth and power. There is no other way to direct people effectively except to make them feel self-directed. This is the only way a few thousand "elite" can control six billion. But many elite promotions are sputtering in the Internet era. The continuing effort to animate these carcasses tells us the elite's toolkit is bare. It has no answer to the Internet's corrosive truth-telling except to continue to maintain the fiction that its promotions are believable and actionable.'

"There is a pattern to the way these scares develop." -- FORCED MEMES ARE FORCED

'In the 20th century, when a promotion was launched, the mainstream media reported on it like an echo chamber, each major newspaper and television station reporting the same thing in different ways, until eventually it sunk in. People began to believe it. But the power elite doesn't have that sort of power in the 21st century, thanks to the widespread debunking by the Internet. It's not just the sour economy, for there have been sour economies before. It's the information that is being spread by electronic communications. It's a kind of meme itself – or anti-meme. People are waking up, as if from a bad dream. Many elite promotions are unraveling or at least becoming less convincing. The EU has been built on lies, as those behind it never admitted the final destination was a United States of Europe. Now, thanks to the Internet and the economic crisis, such lies are unraveling and patience is running out. That's what the German leaders are seeing. That's the reason for the desperation.'

'...technologically abetted narcissism: the reprocessing of culture into self-aggrandizing tidbits to be disseminated online ... Carles asks: "Do people care more about cute memes than tons of words?" The implied answer is that they "care more" about neither, because they care only about themselves and instrumentalizing memes to improve their own cachet. Carles suggests that "viral meme blogs" have become "more lucrative than trying to become an authentic writer" -- which of course evokes the question of what sort of authenticity as writer is possible after the alleged "death of the author" and the nullification of the "author function" have been widely proclaimed. The author function itself has become the virus, the content implied by any viral meme. The meme, regardless of its surface content, primarily signifies its transmitter and that transmitter's status as one who has been infected.'

'...if the hard core arises for certain identifiable reasons, it can be broken up or at least muted by government action ["cognitive diversity"]. ...there are intrinsic costs to the strategy of giving up on the hard core and directing government efforts solely towards inoculating the mass audience. For one thing, the hard core may itself provide the most serious threat. For another, a response geared to a mass audience (whether or not nominally pitched as a response to the conspiracy theorists) will lead some to embrace rather than reject the conspiracy theory the government is trying to rebut. This is the legitimation dilemma again: to begin a program of inoculation is to signal that the disease is already widespread and threatening. Under pluralistic ignorance, the perverse result may actually be to spread the conspiracy theory further. -- With an audience already thoroughly in the grip of conspiracy theories, open counterspeech may simply be more grist for the conspiratorial mill.'

'...those who minister to the mentally ill inadvertently help to select which symptoms will be recognized as legitimate. ...the forms of madness from one place and time often look remarkably different from the forms of madness in another. That is until recently. ...in the process of teaching the rest of the world to think like us ... we’ve been changing not only the treatments but also the expression of mental illness in other cultures. -- What is being missed is a deep understanding of how the expectations and beliefs of the sufferer shape their suffering. “Culture shapes the way general psychopathology is going to be translated partially or completely into specific psychopathology. When there is a cultural atmosphere in which professionals, the media, schools, doctors, psychologists all recognize and endorse and talk about and publicize [a disorder], then people can be triggered to consciously or unconsciously pick [a] pathology as a way to express that conflict.”'

FORCED MEMES ARE FORCED -- '...dominant social themes include the deadly swine flu, the ticking time bomb of overpopulation, the flooding of the world from global warming, the freezing of the world from peak oil - and on and on. In all these instances—every one—a government solution is proposed that will ameliorate the difficulty. And all the solutions, we note, are increasingly international and involve the United Nations and other global bodies. -- Enmeshing memes within the regulatory process gives them nearly unimpeachable authority. The police enforce the supporting regs. The courts create a judicial process regardless of whether the memes are true or not. The mainstream media then deals with the memes as if they were established fact. A nation's education system retells them with certainty and even quizzes students on them. Businesses are built around the demand generated by a given dominant social theme.'

'"It's hard to quantify the influence that people exert. Ideas are replicators, and influence makes them replicate: but when that happens, there usually isn't a birth certificate." That's another way in which evolutionary graph theorists may have an impact. Evolutionary graph theory provides a quantitative language for describing how replicators behave on networks – and may lead to new ways of quantifying the value of influence on the web. "The idea we need to explore is this: what is the likelihood that a particular stimulus within a social network leads to a particular response?" says Lieberman. "In my opinion, as we get better at measuring what happens within social networks, I predict a lot more organised marketing efforts on social networks as well as systematic influence campaigns."'

'When the most intelligent people over-ride the social intelligence systems and apply generic, abstract and systematic reasoning of the kind which is enhanced among higher IQ people, they are ignoring an ‘expert system’ in favour of a non-expert system. -- ...random silliness of the most intelligent people may be amplified to generate systematic wrongness when intellectuals are in addition ‘advertising’ their own high intelligence in the evolutionarily novel context of a modern IQ meritocracy. The cognitively-stratified context of communicating almost-exclusively with others of similar intelligence, generates opinions and behaviours among the highest IQ people which are not just lacking in common sense but perversely wrong. Hence the phenomenon of ‘political correctness’ (PC); whereby false and foolish ideas have come to dominate, and moralistically be enforced upon, the ruling elites of whole nations.'

"Diane Benscoter talks about how she joined the Moonies -- and stayed for five long years. She shares an insider's perspective on cults and extremist movements, and proposes a new way to think about today's most troubling conflicts." -- The circular logic of exceptionalism.

'"There exists," Cohn wrote, "...a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as ideas are churned out by crooks and half-educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant and superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, captures and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people, who thereupon take leave of sanity and responsibility. And it occasionally happens that this underworld becomes a political power and changes the course of history." -- ...they are driven as much by a psychological need as a totalitarian ideology. Their delusions impose a comforting coherence on the mess of life and randomness of death. By "suggesting that there is an explanation, that human agencies are powerful and that there is order rather than chaos," the conspiracy theorist places himself in a sophisticated elite that discerns connections where the multitude sees only happenstance.' -- Um, spot the 'coherence' -making?

'On the net, an idea can appear virtually simultaneously in different parts of the world, and spread independently of the distance or proximity between senders and receivers. The end result is likely to be the emergence of a globally shared ideology, or "world culture", transcending the old geographical, political and religious boundaries. (Note that such homogeneization of memes only results for memes that are otherwise equivalent, such as conventions, standards or codes. Beliefs differing on the other dimensions of meme selection will be much less influenced by conformist selection.) ...the emerging global network... learns and develops in a non-random way. The network functions like a nervous system for the social superorganism, transmitting signals between its different "organs", memorizing its experiences, making them available for retrieval when needed, and generally steering and coordinating its different functions. Thus, it might be viewed as a global brain.'

"...during the different stages of their life-cycle, memes are subjected to objective, subjective intersubjective and meme-centered selection criteria. #Meme-centered Criteria: #Self-justification, the degree to which the components of a meme mutually support each other, will facilitate understanding and acceptance. #Self-reinforcement, the degree to which the meme stimulates its host to rehearse itself, e.g. by repetition, meditation, prayer, etc., will strengthen retention. #Intolerance, the degree to which a meme excludes rival memes from being assimilated or retained, will also help the meme to retain a stable position in memory. #Proselytism, the degree to which the meme urges its host to maximally spread the meme to other hosts, will increase the rates of expression and transmission."

'Starting with the simple tale of an ant, philosopher Dan Dennett unleashes a devastating salvo of ideas, making a powerful case for the existence of memes -- concepts that are literally alive.' -- "Words are memes that can be pronounced."

'What separates the Stand Alone Complex from normal copycat behavior is that the originator of the copied action is not even a real person, but merely a rumored figure that performed the copied action. Even without instruction or leadership a certain type of person will spring into action to imitate the rumored action and move toward the same goal even if only subconsciously. The result is an epidemic of copied behavior–with no originator. ...mass hysteria-with purpose. ... an emergent phenomenon catalyzed by parallelization of the human psyche through the cyberbrain networks. ...by exploiting the mechanism of information transmission in society, one could achieve a very efficient and subtle thought control. Indeed, since people tend to modify slightly the information (and forget where it came from) in the processes of consumption (or appropriation), it becomes difficult to sort genuine ideas from modified, implanted ones.' -- And a whole new reality was set into motion.

{yo,sup} dawg, I heard you like X, so I put an X in your Y so you can VERB(x) while you VERB(y)

'Carles evokes the meme to end all memes, the transcendental meme which would authorize and guarantee the sense of all the others, but realizes, naturally that such a meme is not possible... ....his concluding question is more of a rhetorical taunt than a challenge: "Carles asks: Can 1 meme …change the world?" The answer is plain. One meme in isolation can achieve nothing, would not even be recognizable as a meme. All memes rely on their supplement to become legible. The meme is only epistimologically salient after it has been exposed, discredited, revealed to be nothing but an old meme. Perhaps Carles warns us of identifying ourselves and reducing ourselves to such a meme.'

"MEME is a blog post on HIPSTER RUNOFF. MEME is presented by Carles. What happens if 1 meme changed everything we once knew about memes, changing the way that we meme, and shattering pre-existing notions of memery? Is the world ready for this meme? So many memes–but when can a meme be more than ‘just another meme in the meme economy’? MEME. Presented by Carles. Carles asks: Can 1 meme …change the world?" -- First I was like: meme, but then I was like: MEME

#Do not FORCE memes on consumers. #Make sure your memes are either original, or do a good job of copying pre-existing memes. #Know your band. Know your memes. Know your audience. #Don’t feel entitled to anything. Your band’s existence is a journey. #Do not rebel against the biggest news sources. You must embrace them/manipulate them. There is no other way. Become bros. #The tastemaking economy may or may not be more important/fun than bands themselves. #Making+filtering memes = responsibility. #Every one, every band, and every website is searching for authenticity on their own terms. #Every one, every band, and every website is searching for a way to make money on any one’s terms. #Memes can be simple or complex. Usually the more ‘organic’ a meme-birth is, the more likely the meme is to help your brand #There are downsides to creating a fan base with a high demand for your memes, including lack of personal privacy and album leaks."

"Your band must invade the Perception Economy. Your Band must no longer be a band. Your band must be a meme. A Meme Which Generates subMemes. These memes must be compelling, intriguing, and interesting enough for people to ‘follow’ or at least think that you are ‘worth following. The modern band is not just about ‘music.’ The modern band must successfully win over fans by finding effective methods to generate themselves into a meme-source worth following. You are more than just your music. You are an aesthetic. You are the news that bros every where need to read about. You need to picture a world where you have at least 20K twitter followers who are eager to follow your lifestream on a meme-to-meme basis. Your band is a meme, which slowly injects the meme economy with new memes that make your band seem ‘more important.’ While your band will always be a group of friends/bros, the perception of your band will grow as the memes which you generate continue to seem ‘more important."

"Anonymous is an idea, a superconsciousness born on the internet."

"Anonymous is not a person, nor is it a group, movement or cause: Anonymous is a collective, a commune of human thought and useless imagery. Anonymous must work as one. No single Anonymous knows everything. Anonymous is everyone and noone. You are. I am. Everyone is. Anonymous is humanity when the gloves come off."

"Hello, Anonymous. We are Anonymous."

Hilarious (and slightly obsessive). "Just need to stick your brand in there somehow." -- Hehe!

"A city speaks to you mostly by accident—in things you see through windows, in conversations you overhear. It's not something you have to seek out, but something you can't turn off. " -- What a great read!

"... ideas don't have "power" in their own right, but only in certain historical contexts, and sometimes not at all."

"For Ogburn and Thomas, the sheer number of multiples could mean only one thing: scientific discoveries must, in some sense, be inevitable. They must be in the air, products of the intellectual climate of a specific time and place."

"Evolutionary psychology is focused on how evolution has shaped the mind and behavior. Though applicable to any organism with a nervous system, most research in evolutionary psychology focuses on humans."

"... true teme machines are arriving" -- "... it will look like humans are just a minor thing on this planet with masses (of) silicon-based machinery using us to drag stuff out of the ground to build more machines."

“In lulz we trust.”

"It just doesn't work." -- Right. So now that's cleared up, what's the next buzzmeme?

Dan Dennet: "the fundamental purpose of brains is to produce future…brains are, in essence, anticipation machines"

"Once an idea spread to a critical mass of easily influenced individuals, it took hold and continued to spread to other easily influenced individuals. In some networks, it was far easier to get an idea established this way than in others." Populism++

#1 Antigenic drift is the gradual mutation of surface antigens as the virus moves through the population. (the remix) #2 Antigenic shift is when two viruses from two different species mix to form a hybrid and a completely new virus. (the mash-up)"

LOLcats phenom (WSJ's site is sooo annoying!)

Not even going to ask it.

'Much human creativity comes from "out-of-the-box" thinking: applying knowledge, structure or skills from another domain, and also making mistake... smachines can apply inverse or orthogonal analysis to incorporate human creativity by trial and error.'

"understanding the dynamics of the hive mind are [is] important. Providing feedback loops to opinions, enabling a momentum of consensus to emerge actually changes the opinions of the individuals within the network. Ignore this lesson at your peril."

"Other options to language that would allow the permissioned knowing of value systems, beliefs and history would contribute to enriched communications. Mechanisms for sharing clusters of thought rather than individual ideas would also be a start."

Yes, yes, brands are mental models... it's just semiotics and sign play. Chew on this, I will.

"Take a look at some of the hidden influencers deciding what is popular on the Internet. It's also giving rise to an obsessive subculture of ordinary but surprisingly influential people. (Gargoyles)

"Two-part documentary asking whether or not there is such a thing as the soul."

"Dawkins is an outspoken atheist, humanist, and scepti. Dawkins' impassioned defence of evolution has earned him the appellation "Darwin's rottweiler".

Lots to snack on here.