Meme culture is getting...tiresome.

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**nfe**

Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Basically, memes are the new printing press, the new telephone, the new email - a new way of communicating ideas (sure, I doubt they'll have the same impact as any of the above - although they well could).

Pictorial memes much, much older than any of those examples. Thousands of years older.

Ideological art, like cave paintings, cylinder seals, sculpture, and so on, only work if the audience recognises pictorial representations of culturally-relevant and familiar images. Trajan's column only works in communicating message if you know what Roman pictorial codes for 'Roman army' and 'Dacian' are. The Parthenon frieze only communicates properly if you know about the Panathenaia is and the activities that comprise it. Old Assyrian reliefs only make sense if you know a bull=Aššur, horned helmets mean deities, and that weird chevron pattern means 'cult fabric'.

As for textual ones, well that's just any reference to another source familiar to writer and audience - so they're pretty much as old as text is. Jonah and the Whale is full of them - its why lot sof people read the entire narrative as satire. The Satyricon is another.

**Compel**

Dewey on the basketball court, admonishing his father.

Dogs when his home on fire, stating this is fine.

Man tapping the side of his head with a knowing smirk.

Malcolm Reynolds, his hands moving. Malcolm Reynolds his hands stopped. Malcolm Reynolds, looking confused.

**slave.entity**

The biggest shock is how fast meme culture changes. Memes now move at light speed.

**Kilkrazy**

NY Times article on memes, from 2016.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/06/arts/this-is-fine-meme-dog-fire.html

It makes a couple of interesting and valid points.

**Sgt_Smudge**

nfe wrote:
Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Basically, memes are the new printing press, the new telephone, the new email - a new way of communicating ideas (sure, I doubt they'll have the same impact as any of the above - although they well could).

Pictorial memes much, much older than any of those examples. Thousands of years older.

Ideological art, like cave paintings, cylinder seals, sculpture, and so on, only work if the audience recognises pictorial representations of culturally-relevant and familiar images. Trajan's column only works in communicating message if you know what Roman pictorial codes for 'Roman army' and 'Dacian' are. The Parthenon frieze only communicates properly if you know about the Panathenaia is and the activities that comprise it. Old Assyrian reliefs only make sense if you know a bull=Aššur, horned helmets mean deities, and that weird chevron pattern means 'cult fabric'.

As for textual ones, well that's just any reference to another source familiar to writer and audience - so they're pretty much as old as text is. Jonah and the Whale is full of them - its why lot sof people read the entire narrative as satire. The Satyricon is another.

Oh, absolutely. I probably should have worded my point differently - not "new", but "similar".

**Iron_Captain**

Compel wrote:
Darmok on the ocean, Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, Darmok and Jalad on the ocean.

Temba, his arms wide.

Shaka, when the walls fell.

Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel.

- Memes, September 30th, 1991. (Thanks to a friend for pointing this out)

Off-topic, but I have to get it off my chest. I never liked that Star Trek episode. It did not make sense. Certainly, when faced with people who evidently do not understand your metaphors you would switch to speaking without metaphors? Certainly the Tamarians are capable of speaking without using metaphors, otherwise they would never have been able to create metaphors or even learn to speak in the first place. They will need to speak without metaphors when they teach their children to speak for example. This means that Dathon could have spoken without using metaphors if he had wanted to. But then why does Dathon so radically refuse to speak without metaphors to Picard? It does not make sense. Evidently the Tamarians wish to be understood, yet they deliberately speak in a way that makes themselves unintelligible to foreigners?

**LordofHats**

Iron_Captain wrote:

Off-topic, but I have to get it off my chest. I never liked that Star Trek episode. It did not make sense. Certainly, when faced with people who evidently do not understand your metaphors you would switch to speaking without metaphors? Certainly the Tamarians are capable of speaking without using metaphors, otherwise they would never have been able to create metaphors or even learn to speak in the first place. They will need to speak without metaphors when they teach their children to speak for example. This means that Dathon could have spoken without using metaphors if he had wanted to. But then why does Dathon so radically refuse to speak without metaphors to Picard? It does not make sense. Evidently the Tamarians wish to be understood, yet they deliberately speak in a way that makes themselves unintelligible to foreigners?

To answer:

Spoiler:

**Kilkrazy**

The "Universal Translator" is of course an SF excuse which enables plot development to proceed within the 45 minutes an episode lasts. It's what I mean about accepting some degree of unrealism for the sake of drama. (See other thread.)

**Just Tony**

You know those SyFy movies that are essentially lower budget knock offs of existing movies? Transmorphers, for existence? You know, the ones where it ends with a nuke ending the thread almost invariably?

The Darnok episode is essentially one of those to Enemy Mine.

**Kilkrazy**

Enemy Mine is essentially an elaborated remake of Hell in the Pacific.

**Just Tony**

Kilkrazy wrote:
Enemy Mine is essentially an elaborated remake of Hell in the Pacific.

True, but if you take any work and start a chain of derivative works from it, the quality will eventually break down sooner rather than later.

I also hate how things get a cult following that they suddenly are completely beyond reproach, no matter HOW valid your criticisms could be.

**Easy E**

Just Tony wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
Enemy Mine is essentially an elaborated remake of Hell in the Pacific.

True, but if you take any work and start a chain of derivative works from it, the quality will eventually break down sooner rather than later.

I also hate how things get a cult following that they suddenly are completely beyond reproach, no matter HOW valid your criticisms could be.

Ummmm..... then theoretically every work now is the "worst" version of most stories as Aristotle had the basic plots and conflicts all listed out a very, very, very long time ago.

**Just Tony**

Easy E wrote:
Just Tony wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
Enemy Mine is essentially an elaborated remake of Hell in the Pacific.

True, but if you take any work and start a chain of derivative works from it, the quality will eventually break down sooner rather than later.

I also hate how things get a cult following that they suddenly are completely beyond reproach, no matter HOW valid your criticisms could be.

Ummmm..... then theoretically every work now is the "worst" version of most stories as Aristotle had the basic plots and conflicts all listed out a very, very, very long time ago.

Good point, I missed the Aristotle stories that involved shape shifting alien robots. Who knew everything came down to one Greek guy? Oh, it didn't? Yeah, this may be the mother of false equivalencies.

**Elemental**

ProtoClone wrote:
I found the older i get, I still don't care enough to let things like this get to me.

Being 41, by far not the oldest here, I have seen a fair amount of change in society. This is just something that has happened, like potholes.

Same here, I'm happy to be a bit behind the curve of culture a bit. New stuff goes over my head--but it if it had any actual value or humour, it'll still be round when I get round to noticing it. The only value in keeping up with the cutting-edge seems to be so you can feel like part of an in-crowd and smirk at those who don't understand the private language.

**Easy E**

Just Tony wrote:
Easy E wrote:
Just Tony wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
Enemy Mine is essentially an elaborated remake of Hell in the Pacific.

True, but if you take any work and start a chain of derivative works from it, the quality will eventually break down sooner rather than later.

I also hate how things get a cult following that they suddenly are completely beyond reproach, no matter HOW valid your criticisms could be.

Ummmm..... then theoretically every work now is the "worst" version of most stories as Aristotle had the basic plots and conflicts all listed out a very, very, very long time ago.

Good point, I missed the Aristotle stories that involved shape shifting alien robots. Who knew everything came down to one Greek guy? Oh, it didn't? Yeah, this may be the mother of false equivalencies.

Basic plots and conflicts..... you know.... man vs man, man vs nature, man vs self, etc.... even stories about shape shifting alien robots have the same basic conflicts and plots as an old dead Greek guy wrote down a few centuries ago. So you know..... everything is derivative.

Also, is shape shifting alien robots that different from shape-shifting inhuman gods?

**Just Tony**

You're making a great point for nobody to bother making any fiction from here on out. Is that what you're aiming for, or is it more that you don't like me making a very accurate comparison between Enemy Mine and Darmok?

**Yodhrin**

Yes, because you comparing two of the best liked episodes of Star Trek and branding one of them as basically the same as Sharknado in comparison to the other is totally fair an accurate

If you're going to be ridiculous, you can't complain when people boil your nonsense down to the purest form in reply.

**Just Tony**

Scroll up to see my thoughts about cult following making things beyond reproach.

I don't give a good God damn how popular that episode is with the 4chan and meme crowd, there are obvious parallels to Enemy Mine.

**Haighus**

Easy E wrote:
Just Tony wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
Enemy Mine is essentially an elaborated remake of Hell in the Pacific.

True, but if you take any work and start a chain of derivative works from it, the quality will eventually break down sooner rather than later.

I also hate how things get a cult following that they suddenly are completely beyond reproach, no matter HOW valid your criticisms could be.

Ummmm..... then theoretically every work now is the "worst" version of most stories as Aristotle had the basic plots and conflicts all listed out a very, very, very long time ago.

Eh, make any statement suitably vague and it becomes all encompassing

It's like Sun Tzu- what he says is generally spot on, but that is partly because a lot of it is sufficiently vague to apply to a variety of situations in some way.

**Herzlos**

Voss wrote:
If I'm not on a gaming related website... I don't see any. Period. They don't come up in real life, in the workplace or people I meet. Maybe y'all are spending too much time plugged in?

I think this is a big part of it - you say you've been subjected to a lot of 40K memes at work in a short period of time - presumably you work with gamers who know you're a gamer?
I'll encounter maybe 1 meme a month at work, but we're not that close a social group and it's usually in some sort of context.

I'm not sure it's any different to kids parroting clips and in-jokes from film/TV, which is what we did relentlessly before the internet. "Got any pegs Dave?" "Dude" "Wazaaaaaap?" and so on, shouted at random.
There's always been a big part of culture about making stuff your own and finding your own identity, and that usually boils down to producing inane garbage that means nothing to anyone outside of that particularly sub-culture.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Haighus wrote:

*Scratch that- I am pretty sure the dude from Red Dwarf is in one of them, not sure which though. So that's one

Coronation Street, I think, I've never watched it. There was even some weird cross over in Season 9 (?) where they go back to Earth and end off in Coronation Street, in that pub.

**nfe**

Talking about Enemy Mine like it's some grandiose piece of originality and Darmok being a heinous act of plagiarism

Yes, they're similar, and the use 'stranded on unfamiliar planet' as the plot point to create the story - but the story is old. I mean Jesus, the title of the '85 film (and the '79 book) is an Anglicised contraction of a two-and-a-half-millennia old Sanskrit proverb, itself in English use for around 250 years, and chosen because it refers specifically to the trope at the centre of the narrative. The idea of two foes, isolated by geography or circumstance, and forced to learn to get on the same page and work together was hardly hot of the presses.

Even restricting ourselves to genre fiction, there are earlier variants of the story by big names like Trail of Cthtulhu, and The Other Wind. Beyond sci-fi and fantasy there are little known works by nobodies like Coriolanus (itself borrowed from Plutarch).

But hey, maybe they're all rip offs of Kish, Akkad, Ebla, and Nagar acquiring a common language and fighting Mari 4,000 years ago?

**Gitzbitah**

Just Tony wrote:
You're making a great point for nobody to bother making any fiction from here on out. Is that what you're aiming for, or is it more that you don't like me making a very accurate comparison between Enemy Mine and Darmok?

There's two pieces of literary wisdom at work here, semingly contradictory. The first is that humans don't have anything new to say- as has been pointed out, we love hearing the same stories. Gilgamesh, Luke Skywalker, King Arthur, every Marvel origin movie is a hero's journey story.

And then there's the other one- every generation needs to tell these stories themselves, in their own ways.

Look at Harry Potter and Hercules. Orphan has special parents and crazy powers. They must go on a series of quests. Great! Story told. But people love new things too. It's why people will gladly rebuy their Space Marines in Primaris, or get that extra set because this time they have 2 guns in their hands. It's theirs, apparently unburdened by history. Don't be mad about our rampant plagiarism... think of every story as well-researched, or inspired by a great story.

**AllSeeingSkink**

I’ve only ever had a problem with memes on places like dakka, where memes are often specific and abstract enough to be a hindrance to communication.

In regular day to day life (even in war games circles) people tend not to use memes that are so horribly abstract that it’s annoying. And I say that working at a university surrounded by kids in their late teens and early twenties.

Nerds in general are pretty bad for references that require prior specific knowledge, long before internet memes I’d cringe at things like monty python references. That said I’ve been known to make LOTR quotes, but only when what I was going to say is close enough in wording to the quote that someone who has no knowledge of LOTR will still understand me without catching the reference.

**Easy E**

Just Tony wrote:
You're making a great point for nobody to bother making any fiction from here on out. Is that what you're aiming for, or is it more that you don't like me making a very accurate comparison between Enemy Mine and Darmok?

Actually, you did originally when you said all derivative works get worse in quality the further from the original you get. My argument then was essentially that this line of thinking is inaccurate.

Since you forgot your own point, I am not surprised that your argument is now that there ARE unique things to be said even on derivative or long standing ideas.

So, I guess we are actually arguing to agree with each other?

**Compel**

Herzlos wrote:

I'm not sure it's any different to kids parroting clips and in-jokes from film/TV, which is what we did relentlessly before the internet. "Got any pegs Dave?" "Dude" "Wazaaaaaap?" and so on, shouted at random.
There's always been a big part of culture about making stuff your own and finding your own identity, and that usually boils down to producing inane garbage that means nothing to anyone outside of that particularly sub-culture.

And as far as I know, fortnite dances haven't had this reaction yet.

The ad continued to grow in notoriety. I remember having a conversation with a doctor who complained that kids were “Tangoing” each other at the cost of perforated ear drums. Naturally, it got banned and we had to write a new version

**Kilkrazy**

They don't make 'em like they used to!

**Elemental**

Herzlos wrote:

I'm not sure it's any different to kids parroting clips and in-jokes from film/TV, which is what we did relentlessly before the internet. "Got any pegs Dave?" "Dude" "Wazaaaaaap?" and so on, shouted at random.
There's always been a big part of culture about making stuff your own and finding your own identity, and that usually boils down to producing inane garbage that means nothing to anyone outside of that particularly sub-culture.

Heck, we've had people doing elaborations and variations on jokes forever ("Two guys walk into a bar...." or "Knock knock....") and a lot of "memes" are essentially the same kind of thing just expressed as a captioned image. The same goes for ones like the MitM image upthread--it's essentially a sentence with an image attached, not meaningfully different from an emoticon.

**nfe**

And it got replaced with the daft Tango Man motif that stuck so rigidly it spawned a doll that everyone had to have!

**TheOpposition**

Memes are art, Memes are modern art in the true sense of the word.

**Voss**

TheOpposition wrote:
Memes are art, Memes are modern art in the true sense of the word.

Replaceable garbage of minimal effort and no lasting value?