the revenge of the shape rotators (part 2)
the democratization of rarified ridicule is the alkahest of insincere imagery
this is post 2 in a 3 part series.
please read part 1 first.
the information to rapidly make and rarify memes that refute what was once the primary modality of high-speed emotive messaging has completely pantsed the phonies and exposed the dumb-dumbs.
their silly tricks and tricky tactics are now immediately revealed in so close to real time that they seem hopelessly lost and like they cannot find any new strategy. after all, when your whole playbook is manipulation through deception and passing off emotional imagery as fact because it’s too fast to refute logically, where else are you going to go? you have to keep it up or switch to entirely new aims and justifications.
their whole ethos and agenda developed because these tactics were suited to spreading it. the medium became the message and the message became dogmatic.
and dogmatists can’t meme.
memes represent an ascendance of rationality because metaphor and analogy are structurally a rational process rather than an emotive one.
memes may convey emotion, but it is not the core of the modality.
shape rotation is.
the bat has become MUCH too quick for the fastball.
consider this image of AOC getting arrested at the roe rally at the supreme court.
our plucky heroine is taken away in handcuffs by the cruel agents of the state.
in another age, this would be the iconic emotive image that everyone knew.
but not today.
because there was one little problemo here:
she was not arrested in any real sense. she was not handcuffed at all. the pose is fake. this was a photo op. and everyone caught her.
watch chiquita khrushchev raise her arm in victory at the end of the video after her sad shuffle to the smollet-town jail.
now this alone can only do so much. it’s video, long form, and too slow to fight such a powerful image. this is the old way.
a more potent universal solvent is needed.
but it took about 20 seconds to fix that. some wiseacre cat comes along and adds a speech bubble and suddenly your image of oppression is an object of ridicule.
and the whole world joined in.
this was like watching “the amazing alexandra” get heckled off the magic-show stage by 10,000 fenway bleacher bums.
it’s a vast mismatch.
nothing can stand up to this:
the ability to take a picture and link it to other images and concepts through evocative analogy and metaphor in real time is entirely new as is the breadth of broadcast and the stunning speed of selection for fitness among such informational vectors.
the bleacher bums have come into their own and not only democratized mockery but are doing so in massive parallel creating an evolutionary arms race so fast it would make skynet tremble.
and this changes everything. not only does it spread a different message that cannot be controlled, but it links the initial image to the new, repurposed expression. this renders the original image streisand effect not signal.
the prior impact is effaced and replaced by the new (and yet retains its power). the old images, even unaltered, wind up inverted in significance because the new ones are more compelling, more memorable, and evoke greater meaning.
where once they evoked status, they now cry fraud.
it’s dazzlingly effective and it multiplies and expands to suck in all adjacent energy.
riff after riff after riff…
and, let’s face it, this is way more fun.
there is just nowhere to hide from this. the ridicule and linkage is too intense, too fast, and mutates too rapidly consuming everything you try to use against it.
no sooner do you utter the phrase “malign creativity” than there are 200 memes that have adopted it as their own gleefully boomeranging it back at you.
all information is meme-fodder and the jiujitsu of using the power of someone’s own images against them has a wonderful feeling of turnabout being fair play.
and striking back in response to this is difficult.
fighting humor with stridence is a terrible look.
that’s as low status as it gets.
never bring outrage to a meme fight.
they so desperately want to stop this because they cannot compete with it.
commissars can’t do it.
but kittens can.
(and this does not make the commissars happy.)
and alleged “information experts” get booed off the stage.
because this is the game now. it’s everywhere.
this is the new language of politics.
this is the new language of power.
it cannot be shut off and as a medium of communication it has brought a whole new level of rationality and honesty back into the game. you cannot hide from shape rotation.
when you turn an image, it is what it is.
and people see it.
this has become as wonderfully public as it has irrepressibly fecund.
the house of lies is on fire.
part 3 follows:
"chiquita khrushchev"
Oh God. Jingle gonna be in my head all day.
This series places it all in context. Babylon Bee is long form meme-ing, which is why I check my feed to see BB's take on every silly event, and I haven't read the Onion in years.