Your memes suck, this is why

How memes are made and propagated plays a vital role in their efficacy

Memes are not just funny pictures. Memes are ideas that spread according to a fitness function, like genes do. Some memes are bad. It’s a fact. Some people, indeed some groups of people, are better or worse than others at making them. But it’s also true that the nature of memes and the context in which they are created matter just as much. Read on to find out why, and learn what you can do in order to identify, and hopefully produce, excellent and effective memes that spread.

In order to understand the process behind the creation of effective memes we must first understand the ideas of memetic fitness and the nature of identity. That was almost the title of this article but something clickbaity usually works better.

The effectiveness of a meme is measured by its spread; much like a gene’s fitness, we know that some measure of efficacy exists by which to judge memes, because we are able to casually observe that some spread more easily and widely than others. The success of a meme depends on its conception into a frictionless environment - it must have a fitness in some abstract sense; not merely that it provides a specific function in a specific context, but that it has some broader reason for being which is by its nature less tangible and difficult to verbally understand. The more relatable it is in a broad sense, the greater its fitness. Put another way, the less it says, the more easily it can be read. Environmental friction will be addressed further down but for now let’s look at the most readily understandable example of memes from the last few years.

It has already been observed by anons online that since the first conception of memes as a form of political weapon, the Right has dominated the Left in their creation. A popular screencap from 4chan sometime around 2012-2014 (which for the life of me I cannot find) has a picture of pepe smiling smugly in a soiled tracksuit, and explains that the leftist equivalent would require several sentences worth of context, whereas the pure form, the Right form of the meme, is simply what it is and leaves much to the viewer. Of course, Pepe peeing himself isn’t explicitly political, but the point is instead a general one in regards to “loading” memes with complex messages. Here is where we first encounter the first application of the memetic fitness function. A good meme should give as little explicit explanation as possible while still allowing clear interpretation. Consider all the many forms Pepe has taken. As a character, he embodies something primal and essential that people somehow “just know”. That smug Pepe is more prevalent than “feels good/bad man” Pepe indicates he has perhaps found his place as a sort of Trickster figure in modern folklore. The Kek acolytes (those few who remain loyal) will be nodding, as frogs have long been associated with primal, undirected chaos. The Trickster is common to many cultures and most people are exposed to him through fairytale stories, so Pepe naturally appeals to many without any explanation. His purpose is clear, and as soon as you see that smug grin you know that something mischievous is happening. It is worth mentioning here that memes can frequently be misinterpreted and that this occurs with increasing environmental friction that will be outlined below. For now, it’s enough to keep in mind that even the word “meme” has gone from meaning “virulent idea” to “funny picture with impact font” and that this misunderstanding directly correlates with the spread of the meme as a meme itself - the more people are exposed to it, the more simplified its meaning becomes until its original and pure form is effectively invalid.

Let’s think about frictionless conception. A pure meme needs as little baggage around it as possible. There needs to be almost no identity attached to the meme which might dilute it. Identity, at least as it is most easily exposed in the online world, is represented by the three following forms which I call Anonymity, Avatar, and Profile. Anonymity is pure, contextless communication. The obvious example is a message board like 4chan where there are no usernames or identifiers. There’s an old joke that you’ve probably called celebrities and presidents unsavoury things while shitposting, and it comes from this frictionless identity. There are still some tells to identity on this layer if forensic linguistics are invoked, but that requires focusing on an identity which is not actively presented in lieu of the information which is front and centre - identity is really a second or third order concern in such places. Because you don’t have any context for the information you are absorbing, it has to be judged on face value. There is no reputation involved. Because of this, ideas will be discarded with extreme speed if they are not good enough, and nothing about you or your credentials will change that. Memes must come from here or they will not spread to their fullest.

The second form, Avatar Identity, seems to congregate around interest groups, probably because expertise in these groups indicates acquired knowledge and wisdom. Avatar identity can be found on the old internet, known for its flame wars which erupted on interest group forums dedicated to specific purposes. Today the forum is basically dead, having been absorbed by places like Reddit which continues the Avatar Identity and takes it to it’s logical conclusion with features like upvotes, downvotes, and shadow bans. Avatar Identity provides the most minimal amount of reputation possible. Imagine you are playing an online game with xX-k1lla-Xx and they destroy you repeatedly. The next time you see xX-k1lla-Xx, you expect the same thing. Avatar Identity allows for this while also giving a little bit of the benefit of anonymity, because if an outsider comes in without any prior knowledge they’ll judge what they see based purely on initial perception until they develop their own impressions and reputations. Memes coming from here can be moderately successful owing to this. However, you more often will see memes specific to fields, or made in template generators based off pure memes, and often they aren’t funny or insightful unless you’re already in the know. They are derivations. This leads us to the next sphere.

Profile Identity is pretty much a thin virtual layer pasted over the real world. This is the internet of Facebook and vloggers. Profile Identity interacts with Avatar Identity on places like Twitter but there is hostility between it and Anonymity. Some people, such as institutional experts, can only exist in the world of Profile Identity because their ideas are so stupid or abstract that they rely on the whole sum of society’s pre-assigned reputation values. There are people who have dedicated their lives to studying 4000 year old pottery shards, and in real-world society you are meant to respect them and their expertise, and any proclamations they make are to be taken as gospel - mostly because they’ve put in so much time and hard work. If you saw their assertions anonymously you probably wouldn’t agree with them. It’s self-evident that nothing original or insightful can come from this sphere of identity, at least not “of itself” or for its own sake.

Think of the “wuz ere” graffiti scratched on walls and pavements, or the “Super S” kids draw on school tables. Both transmitted anonymously, no context provided. Many have remarked on the Pompeii graffiti and how similar it is in tone to modern day shitposting. Contrast this with pretentious scribble like Banksy, which is pure context, and you’ll see why Pepe has taken over the internet while Flower Thrower has not. Anyone can go to great lengths to make Pepe their own, giving him context and communicating themselves through him, while only upper-middle class dorks are going to Banksy exhibitions and talking about how profound it is.

Making memes is all about essentials. If you’re adding context to it, it’s not a meme, it’s just a strangely framed joke, or a crude social message. You must be able to operate without context. Ted Kaczynski outlined how leftism is a result of oversocialisation - for our purposes, we can define that as the inability to extract yourself from context, and extract context from your ideas in order to see how they operate. The simpler you make your message, the more it will spread, and if you make it simple enough you might even will an ancient primal form to instantiate itself once more.