Field Note: To meme or not to meme
Meme: A unit of cultural information that propagates from one mind to another as a theoretical unit of cultural evolution and diffusion.
Internet or digital culture is a major component of our collective cultural heritage, however, I keep wondering how we would go about conserving internet culture, as it is the dominant culture of our times. One aspect of internet culture I thought was very illustrative of such ephemeral, but highly significant, cultural forms: that of the internet meme. The internet meme is a powerful cultural symbol, spreading ideas (usually some form of joke) rapidly across the world. Often these memes take the form of images (or phrases), but are they works of art, or cultural symbols? Also, and intriguing thought could develop around considering what role could meme’s have in conservation practice and theory?
Although the idea of Meme’s is broader than internet culture, I wonder whether the prevalence of internet meme’s, such as the famous lolcats or rickroll or if you remember them the older hamster dance (I hated those hamsters after a while) could account in some way for the spate of shoe related political actions.
First started by Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, when he threw a shoe at Former US President George W. Bush, after which numerous online games developed in which the internet gamer could also throw shoes at the President (such as “Sock and Awe”), as well as launching numerous ‘remixes’ online, and an event which as this blog reported also recently resulted in the unveiling of a shoe sculpture in Tikrit.
This ‘meme’ was observed as a sign of large scale political dissent during the recent Israeli incursion into Gaza, at demonstrations in London numerous shoes were thrown at the gates of Downing Street as a sign of dissent.
Most recently an as yet unnamed individual has thrown a shoe at Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, during a speech at Cambridge University.
These different scenario’s have, as far as I am aware, pretty much no direct political connection however the meme of shoe throwing appears now to have taken hold as a ‘dissent meme’ within dissident political culture. Perhaps it is here to stay, or perhaps it will evolve into something different, or disappear as quickly as it appeared, who can know. However, I do believe the internet meme provides an interesting theoretical construct for observing such phenomena.
I also found a site that has an interactive view of the all the memes that swept across the internet and burrowed into our zeitgeist. Apparently built from Wikipedia information. Search and revel in ‘nostalgia’ for meme’s gone by.
* A field note in this Blog is an idea, concept, issue, that I think worthy of mention, but, that I have not yet expanded upon in any essay length form. But, I include here as a prelude to such a discussion.
