If by venerated you mean sacrificed in their tens of thousands of them to give some turd a better shot at his prayer being granted, then yes. Egypt was not a good place to be an animal of any kind.
It was a crime for a commoner to kill a cat, but they sacrificed them along with other "sacred" animals. One temple site originally held millions of mummified cats: those that were investigated showed they were about 1 year old and had broken necks. Presumably they'd been raised for sacrifice so pilgrims could buy an animal mummy to "gift" whichever god was in play.
I have written many times over the last decade- ridicule is extremely potent against tyrants of all types. They do not like being mocked, and memeing does this like no other form I have seen.
Gato, you are gold. I can't tell you enough how much I enjoy your every post. Truly, you have been and remain instrumental in snaking me through this obstacle- riddled house of mirrors world we live in. Whether the vaccine madness or climate change malice, you have been instrumental in convincing me that in fact I am NOT the crazy one. I meme it- thank you.
You might be interested in this site below, I found because I was looking up information on the Bratislava five (as one does) and found that it included a section on humor in the Eastern Block. The Tag Line for the page is
"Every joke is a tiny revolution." -George Orwell, 1945
Rush always said the liberals have NO sense of humor; they are doom/gloom, sooo serious. He was the quintessential happy warrior; always challenging us conservatives to “be of good cheer” or rather keep being those of good cheer.
He loved to illustrate absurdity by being absurd; kids like Babylon Bee.
So funny when some dour & fatalist Lib would hear Rush doing this! They’d react in hysteria only to have to be told what they heard was parody/humor/just Rush playing them! Miss him BIGLY
Shouldn't that last picture read "Welcome to the dank side" to keep the meme-theme going?
It might interest you to know that Max Gustavsson (the coloured cartoon of the snob remarking about social distancing) is as red as they come; a true parlour pink from the upper middle class and plenty woke too.
Nice to see memetic theory put to good use. It has come a long way from it's fringe origins in the early nineties. Of course, the method has always been there, just not codified. As Cicero put it:
"We fight our opponents seriousness with laughter, and his laughter with seriousness." The goal of all debate is to win the majority over, and getting the hecklers on your side is always good. The mob rules after all, and memes play the mob mentality and the herd insitnct to the hilt.
Memes are also good distractions, they make the people who get them think they are enlightened and knowledgable and helps make sure they don't start investigating and study.
Memedroid is a good platform for posting, generally speaking. They don't seem to overly restrict political memes. We can help by cross posting any good memes any and everywhere. A benefit is that these are more difficult to silence than typed words that are red flagged on non-free speech platforms such as niTwitter, Instaspam, Farcebook, etc.
It's a small part any and all of us play in cross posting these and sharing them in general, but it's a fun way to wage battle. I'd much rather smile at the humor of a woke-antagonizing meme sent to a libtard while they turn all red-faced and flustered than take up arms against someone who is deep in the govt programming propaganda.
Come to think about, given how much time teacher's spend around teenagers, my corps should be the crème de la crÉme when it comes to adults meme-ing. Instead, they seem to react to memes the way a cat responds to commands: doesn't register as more than an annoyance.
First time I heard a pupil using "dank" in that context, I had to ask him what he meant since the sentence didn't make sense. Cue him and his mates rattling off "Deez nuts" "Get to da choppa" (okay, that one I got), and others.
From the perspective of studying communication, semantics/semiotics and so on, memes are (as my wife's tutor Björn Fritz* put it at Lund university early nineties) language coming full circle back to its roots as emotive pictograms for fast and basic communication, as opposed to letters which requires more effort as you are also trying to be more precise.
*Despite being super-woke and as po-mo as they come, the man knows his subjects - art history and visual studies. One just have to have the patience to parse his bias when listening to or reading his stuff.
And jazz, or any pick-up-and-play style of music is the perfect metaphor. I think of the Portsmouth Sinfonia and their apporach to classical music. Check 'em out if you haven't.
"We fight our opponents seriousness with laughter, and his laughter with seriousness." -- If only Victor Davis Hanson knew his Cicero this well.
"The goal of all debate is to win the majority over, and getting the hecklers on your side is always good. The mob rules after all, and memes play the mob mentality and the herd insitnct to the hilt." -- THIS is how we have a peaceful restoration of our nation.
It took a playwright, Valclav Havel, to lead the charge to bring down the Soviet Union.
In the US (and territories)? Just a mild-mannered kitten is all we need.
Gosh, our oppressor (laughing) cabal and their servant drs are akin to Cicero and his quote. I think the technique is now defined as ‘gaslighting’ and very effective.
I think great memes, are humorous and more powerful than mendacious gaslighting and more than distraction.
What does fighting laughter with seriousness look like? Doesn't seriousness tend to be helpless against laughter? Isn't that why we speak of someone's concerns "being laughed off"?
So I just wrote a lengthy reply digging into what I know, as I've taught this stuff and then the Stack jumps because a new post was added and my entire text is poof! Raaargh!
Ok, short retry: look at how El Gato does it.
Some posts are all serious, some are serious and humorous and some are plain humour, yet all follow a coherent and consistent style, theme and pattern. Speaking is the same, really. I have no doubt Sr Gato is quite the orator when needs be - because he displays the mental flexibility required.
Thus, if you are debating with someone behaving like Bush did against Gore, you should adopt a stance in accordance with your persona (we never debate using our real personalities!) which neuters the other one's: Bush's faked plain-speaking country-bumpkin routine could easily have been upturned by a few hard facts about his riches and that he was part of an oil dynasty, but Gore lacked the skill. Obama or Reagan would have mopped the floor with Bush's attempts to dodge every issue by being the funny guy.
Cont. Now, being laughed off is a danger, which is why it may never appear as if you are trying to be funnier than the funster. If you have to joke, do it Reagan-style. Mildly shocking, but framed by a good natured self-assured smile. Contrast him with how Harris comes across with her deranged psychotic cackle - she doesn't signal funny or nice, but "run away, dis lady be cray-cray".
Now, that said, flexibility yet consistency is key. You have som great orators in US history, not just in politics. Trump was not one, only in contrast with his competition does he appear like it. Biden is a disaster and Hillary Clinton the least said the better.
But Nixon, Eisenhower, Reagan, Bush Sr (yes really), Clinton, Kennedy, Obama and many more. Flexible, yet with a consistent style and a well-practiced persona. Bulldog Nixon. Kennedy the modern man. Bush Sr the stern father. Clinton the big brother. Obama the patient pastor.
I'm sorry, I'm trying to fit two semesters' of rethorics and oratory into my reply. Hope you get something out of it!
I'm not trying to be flippant, but I would say take a stab at answering your own question and then debate it with people. I'll debate with you if no one else will.
If we're all in agreement with what gato wrote here, it would suggest that Cicero was wrong in saying we can fight laughter with seriousness. Doesn't gato say essentially this with his words "fighting humor with stridence is a terrible look," and "never bring outrage to a meme fight"?
Serioisness should be read as a style. Say you make a quip about something relating to me (let's imagine we are runners for office) which makes the audience laugh.
I'll make sure to make a visible chuckle and also ensure the smile reaches my eyes - smile with my face so to speak, because a face where the mouth is smiling and the upper part is stern looks psycho.
Then I'll clear my throat and speak in an almost apologetic manner to the tune of "While I certainly appreciate my erstwhile opponent bringing a smile to our faces, someone has to bring us back to the reality of the issue, which is that..."
This is where I hit you with some embarassing fact, like "Despite shelter for homeless costing less than $10 per night per bed, NN has not done anything about this during his years as mayor - except for appointing yet another committee laden down with cousins and friends of his party, costing you the consituents millions and millions of dollars".
That is how you use seriousness against humour. Not by being boring or tedious but by planting the association among the audince that while you're funny, you're also unable to gird your loins and actually get to the nitty-gritty of the real work.
Idea is, the majority may well laugh at the class-clown, but we sure don't want him for president.
(Current events these past years might make me a liar though, but not even the Sibyl could have seen Biden becoming the candidate of choice unless there are hidden masters, ys?)
Like Salena Zito said about Trump before his first election; his supporters take him seriously but not literally, while his opponents taking him literally but not seriously.
Ok, I would say seriousness does not equal outrage or stridency. A second point; you must have each in your arsenal and know when to use them. I don't think gato is advocating all humor all the time.
Like a Jester, Gato knows that he can only get away with speaking truth (very seriously) is by being silly, funny, and serious, and then playing the "who me?" card.
Thanks for sharing what's going on in the background. You are one "seriously" dialed in little feline.
Great point as to the challenge of countering distraction memes that program the masses. BTW, are you familiar with the work of the late David Dees? He was a meme genius. Dark memes but always powerful and resonating. Sad that he died from cancer (melanoma) not long after covid came on the scene.
How can one not enjoy the intellectual honesty and creativity the author displays along with the razor sharp wit, logic, and freedom loving emotions. I'll wager he can put it all in a meme!
So what you're saying is that, between venerating cats and communicating via hieroglyphics, Ancient Egypt was ahead of the curve?
"cats were once worshipped as gods. they have not forgotten."
I'm convinced this was simply the Egyptians being practical and bowing to the inevitable.
This made me snort. Thanks.
We are not responsible for your drug taking habits, human.
Be quiet, plebe, before I report you to the Ministry. ;) ( assuming the name is a reference, and not your real name. If the latter...I plead insanity)
Cats eat rats, rodents ate and spoiled silos of grain, so cats were central to peoples whose primary caloric intake was grain. agri-culture.
Nonsense. Cats forced the Egyptians to keep rats in the grain silos so the cats could eat.
🙌🏼😂
Makes sense, Twitter hates a Historical Oppressor!
Purrrrfectly said.
😹😹😹
Bingo! You stumbled into the biggest secret of all.
We are not progressing, we are regressing.
If by venerated you mean sacrificed in their tens of thousands of them to give some turd a better shot at his prayer being granted, then yes. Egypt was not a good place to be an animal of any kind.
I may be wrong, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that it was actually a crime in ancient Egypt to harm a cat.
There was a Cat goddess, and I think you are right Martha. They worshiped cats I think
they mummified thousands of cats. I do not know if they sacrificed them or if they just mummified their dead cats.
It was a crime for a commoner to kill a cat, but they sacrificed them along with other "sacred" animals. One temple site originally held millions of mummified cats: those that were investigated showed they were about 1 year old and had broken necks. Presumably they'd been raised for sacrifice so pilgrims could buy an animal mummy to "gift" whichever god was in play.
Especially human.
I have written many times over the last decade- ridicule is extremely potent against tyrants of all types. They do not like being mocked, and memeing does this like no other form I have seen.
yes .. and speaking of mocking, this JP Sears is fucking brilliant - "How to Transition a Rooster to a Hen!" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Srfcdq8X-no
Gato, you are gold. I can't tell you enough how much I enjoy your every post. Truly, you have been and remain instrumental in snaking me through this obstacle- riddled house of mirrors world we live in. Whether the vaccine madness or climate change malice, you have been instrumental in convincing me that in fact I am NOT the crazy one. I meme it- thank you.
I credit gato, along with J.P. Sears, as most responsible for any remaining sanity I may have.
Gato's brilliance is more subtle, but JP has costumes, good wigs & his wife's lingerie and undergarments are world-class.
It really is impressive how he fills out that black bra.
This series made my day! Thank you for the much-needed dose of optimism.
Elon Musk: "Who controls the memes, controls the universe."
We must seize the memes of production, comrade!
Join me in memeing the "elite" universities into clown world irrelevance: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-rank-the-top-npc-universities
You might be interested in this site below, I found because I was looking up information on the Bratislava five (as one does) and found that it included a section on humor in the Eastern Block. The Tag Line for the page is
"Every joke is a tiny revolution." -George Orwell, 1945
http://1989.rrchnm.org/exhibits/humor-as-resistance/essay.html
It has GDR jokes as examples, and they are being re-used today
Love it! And the fact is the propagandists do not and cannot use humor. That's why memes make fools of the propaganda. Keep the overlords stumped!
Rush always said the liberals have NO sense of humor; they are doom/gloom, sooo serious. He was the quintessential happy warrior; always challenging us conservatives to “be of good cheer” or rather keep being those of good cheer.
He loved to illustrate absurdity by being absurd; kids like Babylon Bee.
So funny when some dour & fatalist Lib would hear Rush doing this! They’d react in hysteria only to have to be told what they heard was parody/humor/just Rush playing them! Miss him BIGLY
Shouldn't that last picture read "Welcome to the dank side" to keep the meme-theme going?
It might interest you to know that Max Gustavsson (the coloured cartoon of the snob remarking about social distancing) is as red as they come; a true parlour pink from the upper middle class and plenty woke too.
Nice to see memetic theory put to good use. It has come a long way from it's fringe origins in the early nineties. Of course, the method has always been there, just not codified. As Cicero put it:
"We fight our opponents seriousness with laughter, and his laughter with seriousness." The goal of all debate is to win the majority over, and getting the hecklers on your side is always good. The mob rules after all, and memes play the mob mentality and the herd insitnct to the hilt.
Memes are also good distractions, they make the people who get them think they are enlightened and knowledgable and helps make sure they don't start investigating and study.
yup.
that's better.
see, this is the jazz riff memetic evolution about which i was speaking.
changed.
nice one.
Quick meme-changing Cat could keep them chasing their tails for evah!
Memedroid is a good platform for posting, generally speaking. They don't seem to overly restrict political memes. We can help by cross posting any good memes any and everywhere. A benefit is that these are more difficult to silence than typed words that are red flagged on non-free speech platforms such as niTwitter, Instaspam, Farcebook, etc.
It's a small part any and all of us play in cross posting these and sharing them in general, but it's a fun way to wage battle. I'd much rather smile at the humor of a woke-antagonizing meme sent to a libtard while they turn all red-faced and flustered than take up arms against someone who is deep in the govt programming propaganda.
Memes are the true peaceful protest.
🤜💥🤛
Hat off to you!
Come to think about, given how much time teacher's spend around teenagers, my corps should be the crème de la crÉme when it comes to adults meme-ing. Instead, they seem to react to memes the way a cat responds to commands: doesn't register as more than an annoyance.
First time I heard a pupil using "dank" in that context, I had to ask him what he meant since the sentence didn't make sense. Cue him and his mates rattling off "Deez nuts" "Get to da choppa" (okay, that one I got), and others.
From the perspective of studying communication, semantics/semiotics and so on, memes are (as my wife's tutor Björn Fritz* put it at Lund university early nineties) language coming full circle back to its roots as emotive pictograms for fast and basic communication, as opposed to letters which requires more effort as you are also trying to be more precise.
*Despite being super-woke and as po-mo as they come, the man knows his subjects - art history and visual studies. One just have to have the patience to parse his bias when listening to or reading his stuff.
And jazz, or any pick-up-and-play style of music is the perfect metaphor. I think of the Portsmouth Sinfonia and their apporach to classical music. Check 'em out if you haven't.
"We fight our opponents seriousness with laughter, and his laughter with seriousness." -- If only Victor Davis Hanson knew his Cicero this well.
"The goal of all debate is to win the majority over, and getting the hecklers on your side is always good. The mob rules after all, and memes play the mob mentality and the herd insitnct to the hilt." -- THIS is how we have a peaceful restoration of our nation.
It took a playwright, Valclav Havel, to lead the charge to bring down the Soviet Union.
In the US (and territories)? Just a mild-mannered kitten is all we need.
Havel is I'd argue the best source of inspiration you could pick in the US right now.
Gosh, our oppressor (laughing) cabal and their servant drs are akin to Cicero and his quote. I think the technique is now defined as ‘gaslighting’ and very effective.
I think great memes, are humorous and more powerful than mendacious gaslighting and more than distraction.
What does fighting laughter with seriousness look like? Doesn't seriousness tend to be helpless against laughter? Isn't that why we speak of someone's concerns "being laughed off"?
So I just wrote a lengthy reply digging into what I know, as I've taught this stuff and then the Stack jumps because a new post was added and my entire text is poof! Raaargh!
Ok, short retry: look at how El Gato does it.
Some posts are all serious, some are serious and humorous and some are plain humour, yet all follow a coherent and consistent style, theme and pattern. Speaking is the same, really. I have no doubt Sr Gato is quite the orator when needs be - because he displays the mental flexibility required.
Thus, if you are debating with someone behaving like Bush did against Gore, you should adopt a stance in accordance with your persona (we never debate using our real personalities!) which neuters the other one's: Bush's faked plain-speaking country-bumpkin routine could easily have been upturned by a few hard facts about his riches and that he was part of an oil dynasty, but Gore lacked the skill. Obama or Reagan would have mopped the floor with Bush's attempts to dodge every issue by being the funny guy.
Cont. Now, being laughed off is a danger, which is why it may never appear as if you are trying to be funnier than the funster. If you have to joke, do it Reagan-style. Mildly shocking, but framed by a good natured self-assured smile. Contrast him with how Harris comes across with her deranged psychotic cackle - she doesn't signal funny or nice, but "run away, dis lady be cray-cray".
Now, that said, flexibility yet consistency is key. You have som great orators in US history, not just in politics. Trump was not one, only in contrast with his competition does he appear like it. Biden is a disaster and Hillary Clinton the least said the better.
But Nixon, Eisenhower, Reagan, Bush Sr (yes really), Clinton, Kennedy, Obama and many more. Flexible, yet with a consistent style and a well-practiced persona. Bulldog Nixon. Kennedy the modern man. Bush Sr the stern father. Clinton the big brother. Obama the patient pastor.
I'm sorry, I'm trying to fit two semesters' of rethorics and oratory into my reply. Hope you get something out of it!
I'm not trying to be flippant, but I would say take a stab at answering your own question and then debate it with people. I'll debate with you if no one else will.
If we're all in agreement with what gato wrote here, it would suggest that Cicero was wrong in saying we can fight laughter with seriousness. Doesn't gato say essentially this with his words "fighting humor with stridence is a terrible look," and "never bring outrage to a meme fight"?
Serioisness should be read as a style. Say you make a quip about something relating to me (let's imagine we are runners for office) which makes the audience laugh.
I'll make sure to make a visible chuckle and also ensure the smile reaches my eyes - smile with my face so to speak, because a face where the mouth is smiling and the upper part is stern looks psycho.
Then I'll clear my throat and speak in an almost apologetic manner to the tune of "While I certainly appreciate my erstwhile opponent bringing a smile to our faces, someone has to bring us back to the reality of the issue, which is that..."
This is where I hit you with some embarassing fact, like "Despite shelter for homeless costing less than $10 per night per bed, NN has not done anything about this during his years as mayor - except for appointing yet another committee laden down with cousins and friends of his party, costing you the consituents millions and millions of dollars".
That is how you use seriousness against humour. Not by being boring or tedious but by planting the association among the audince that while you're funny, you're also unable to gird your loins and actually get to the nitty-gritty of the real work.
Idea is, the majority may well laugh at the class-clown, but we sure don't want him for president.
(Current events these past years might make me a liar though, but not even the Sibyl could have seen Biden becoming the candidate of choice unless there are hidden masters, ys?)
Like Salena Zito said about Trump before his first election; his supporters take him seriously but not literally, while his opponents taking him literally but not seriously.
Ok, I would say seriousness does not equal outrage or stridency. A second point; you must have each in your arsenal and know when to use them. I don't think gato is advocating all humor all the time.
Like a Jester, Gato knows that he can only get away with speaking truth (very seriously) is by being silly, funny, and serious, and then playing the "who me?" card.
Thanks for sharing what's going on in the background. You are one "seriously" dialed in little feline.
Great point as to the challenge of countering distraction memes that program the masses. BTW, are you familiar with the work of the late David Dees? He was a meme genius. Dark memes but always powerful and resonating. Sad that he died from cancer (melanoma) not long after covid came on the scene.
Great series, Gato.
Sun-Mew and "The Art of Purr" is now my fav. Even better than the classic "Chairman Meow". Here are some of my amateur contributions to the meme:
https://i.postimg.cc/3xcfbFGR/Nelson-Ha-Ha.png
https://i.postimg.cc/P5LLcBVD/Cavemen-Do-ALittle-Research.png
https://i.postimg.cc/bJ1VRVjc/Jim-Jones-1.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/HWRjMSks/Dennis-Rodman.png
Hey, they're very good, btw they must be getting around because
I've seen them all elsewhere. Keep it up! Is it a bit unfair that meme creators don't get recognition? Not even a small stamp at the bottom
of the page. I understand why, besides, knowing you're serving at large
must be most satisfying reward. My routine in the morning to get myself going is to seek a new installment from Citizen Satirist. And when needed
extra boosting going through some more. Sometimes I wonder if
he realises how much his service is appreciated.
I don't care for recognition, I just like mischief :)
Love that Nelson meme! And the Geico Caveman thing is epic.
"I'll have the roast duck, with the mango salsa." "I'm not really hungry. Thank you." Maybe my favorite ad of all time.
I meme, therefore I meme.
It's like neon poetry
ooh, i like that.
I find memes are a secret handshake signal among like-minded friends. They are also an perfect means of communicating with friends “on the fence”.
Humor has the ability to release tension, form social bonds and (in my own case) attract a mate !
So...instead of using the prettiest pebbles in nest building like a penguin, you lined your social media with memes to attract a mate?
Brilliant. Ima try that...
"He's a meme-lord, daddy!"
"never bring outrage to a meme fight". pure gato gold today!
<excellent>...... taps fingers Mr. Burns style
Gato is one of the #basedmemegods
Slightly dated, but this was one of my best meme accumulations during the outbreak of the great Musk-Twitter war of 2022:
https://themariachiyears.substack.com/p/momentous-musk-memes-
That Zuby exchange was hilarious.
I liked your collection. Thanks.
How can one not enjoy the intellectual honesty and creativity the author displays along with the razor sharp wit, logic, and freedom loving emotions. I'll wager he can put it all in a meme!