/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11730623]

We've talked about the linguistic properties of the greentext before, but what about the harder to define words and phrases used on this site? The word 'meme' has so many meanings and everyone intuitively understands them immediately. 'Meme' is now not only a noun but a verb and even an adjective. I'm not great at defining things like this but if someone could come up with a concrete definition for the word 'meme' as in 'a meme degree' or 'depression is a meme disorder'. Not to be confused with the adjective meme as in 'the meme trilogy', which just means that it is frequently memed, the 'meme' I'm thinking of is a pejorative.
Also 4chan has a habit of massively diluting genuinely useful descriptors to the point of meaninglessness (onions and using Reddit as an adjective come to mind)

[Anonymous No.11730704]

>>11730623
Wait wtf I can't even type s.0y without it changing to onions

[Anonymous No.11731263]

>>11730623
fuck off reddit s*yboy

>and everyone intuitively understands them immediately
Language is versatile, it's nothing unusual. You also have the word "shit", it means excrement, drugs, a problem, stuff, that something is bad ("this is shit"), that something is great ("this is the shit", which is probably building off the meaning that refers to drugs) and other shit I can't remember right now as well.

[Anonymous No.11731274]

>>11731263
Shit, I forgot, it's also an exclamation.

[Anonymous No.11731289]

>>11730623
the word meme is incredibly complex

some of us have read the original dawkins text on what a meme is, or the subsequent books like the Meme Machine by Blackmore, and havea deeper understanding

but the meme as commonly understood by popular culture is an entitiy which resonates because we understand instinctively what its symbolic measures point to in our understanding

the recursion of the meme, its essential sameness in each iteration, but dialetic or progressive, or traditional, evolution, adds the higher dynamic of associated concepts of elements of reality

the meme dominates 4chan to a degree which most of us don't even realize, but it increasingly dominates all of the internet, because it is the form of the internet in a sense, the recognition of a signle thing, constantly changed by outside forces, is the same idea as the organism constantly changed by physical replacement or social influence

the meme is like us, related to us, but also alien, and as such it provokes hilarity in those of us who are not lying to ourselves, and fear and panic in those who are immensely scared of what they are, due to various historical or personal forces, an aversion towards seeing anything as it really is, a desire for everything to be an obscure different reality that explains and makes better this one

the meme is the most important idea that has emerged in the past 100 years, and the meme biotic soup that our action create on the internet, and before that inhunter gatherer culture and then the various civilizations, are all paens to the meme, expressed in different forms, fear or love, whatever

the internet has massively accelerated it all, and maybe we will all be gone soon through various forces, singularity, or political stife, but we can finally see it

the meme is the parsel of meaning our divided lives are run by, half animal, half technological

[Anonymous No.11731340]

>>11730623
>>11730704
holy fuck how new are you

[Anonymous No.11731860]

>>11731289
but why can't the left meme