MEMES AS GLOBAL TEXTS

1. MEMES AS GLOBAL TEXTS Cynthia Davidson Stony Brook University Computers & Writing 2017 Concurrent Session H Saturday, June 3, 2017 4:30-5:45 PM

2. Overview of presentation: • Definition and overview of current trends in meme research • Irony as a worldview and “training regime for humans” • Cross-cultural irony for unification of values and social change • Examples of social change memes in Kenya and China • Culture appropriation and racist memes • Applications for teaching about memes

3. What are memes, you ask? An “academic” overview of approaches…

4. It’s inevitable…start with Dawkins (1976) Richard Dawkins postulated that memes, as replicating ideas that evolve in human culture, are subject to the evolutionaryforces of variation, mutation, competition and inheritance. (pre-internet).

5. Since then, this fact itself has become the source of an internet meme

6. Internet memes are almost always multimodal--consisting of words, images, sometimes gesture/movement, and ideas. Going forward in assessing the global spread of internet memes, keep in mind Gunther Kress’ (2009) statement about universal semiotic competence: “Instead of a shared innate linguistic competence I assume shared, social, semiotic communication principles and dispositions--which includes the linguistic as one instance. On globalization: “I take it that it that the term names something real--for instance, the fact that in very many places around the world, economic, political, social, and cultural values and practices are subject to forces which come from ‘outside’ the domain regarded as the immediately framed ‘local’ and have telling effects within it. Within that frame these ‘external’ factors interact with the meanings, values, and practices of the ‘local site’...[s]emiotically speaking, this leads to constant change, transformation, ‘blending’” (11-12). Memes do this so well--they don’t just “replicate,” they merge with each other.

7. Knobel and Lankshear (2007) • Introduced an awareness of memes as a form of literacy • Studied common memes using discourse analysis (Kress, Fairclough, Gee) • Proposed using Gee’s concept of “affinity spaces” to assess memes as socially-embedded series rather than individual textual instances • Worked to identify key qualities of successful online memes • Explored ways that teachers might take up memes as a “new” literacy within school-based learning contexts • Identified the preeminence of terms like “unit,” “structure,” “pattern,” ”idea,” and “set” in literature discussing memes • Pop-cultural intertexuality noted • Ironic stances, caution against literalism • Urged others to look at distribution/circulation patterns • Noted countermeming as a rhetorical practice

8. Shifman (2013) identified content, form, and stance as three recognizable dimensions of internet memes. Related work identifies the role of human agency and the rhetorical work of internet memes (see Kenneth Burke). Content: relates to the ideas and ideologies conveyed by texts. Form: the physical incarnation of the message, manifested both in visual/audible dimensions specific to certain texts, and in more complex genre-related patterns organizing them. Stance: the information memes convey about their own communication, further divided to three subdimensions: (a) participation structures – who is entitled to participate and how, (b) keying – the tone and style of communication, and (c) communicative functions.

9. difference in stance in the pepper-spraying cop meme

10. More than a text E. Jenkins (2014) proposes a visual rhetoric approach suggesting a movement away from analyzing memes as discrete texts bounded by context to forms of engagement with a nod to Burke (form as engagement) and Deleuze (modes as expressive bodies ), stressing “modes” as the virtual underpinning of memetic structure. Modes are fields of virtual potential that create the environment for actualizations of memes to emerge.

11. Issues related to stance and engagement • Milner (2013) studied the “logic of Lulz” and its importance in the dissemination of memes and online social group status, which makes stance consistently difficult (usually by intention) to discern. • Burroughs (2013), writing on memetic trolling during the 2012 Presidential election, noted that sharing memes via social media is consistent with a stance of trolling, and that some form of trolling stance regarding politics has become de facto. • Template availability, as well as the ascension of social media as a platform for consuming political news, has increased countermeming as an agonistic dialogue (see Rintel 2013).

12. An Ironic Worldview • A philosophy blogger named Egeiros argues that the meme-o-verse is currently entering a post-ironic era after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. • In a section called “/pol/, Kek, and the Doge,” Egeiros traces the evolution of Pepe the Frog, a meme embraced on Twitter by Trump and decried as a Nazi symbol by H. Clinton, into the avatar of a fake Egyptian deity named Kek. • Egeiros proposes that “memeplexes” are “deformed anthropotechnic structures” “for the training of humans to act in a particular manner.” • Egeiros argues that memes, rather than adapting to environments, create environments. They are “exercises.” (Application of ideas of Peter Sloterdijk)

13. “Kek”is an Eypgtian chaos deity that was created by participants in the 4chan /pol/ (politically incorrect) board. See more here • “Kek” has become through a series of rhetorical moves associated with a cartoon of a green frog, Pepe. • “Kek” became associated with the “troll candidate,” Donald Trump, who in turn embraced the association by tweeting himself imaged as Pepe (right). • ”Kek” began on the MMORPG World of Warcraft chat logs as a version of “lol” when scrambled. (It still is.) • /pol/ loved Donald Trump because he fulfilled their dreams of a “chaos candidate.”

14. “The point of using ironic memes is that they eliminate damaged or dying training regimes by making them obnoxious and insincere. It is the scorched-earth strategy of training regimes. Satire is used in a similar manner. An idea or practice is parodied and brought to its logical conclusions, and it thus is eliminated. ”-- Egeiros • As Lord Byron noted, “Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away.”

15. <<Shit 4Chan Says>> and Post-Irony/<<Absurdist>> Sincerity “At first glance, it appears to be a stream of meaningless stupid shit. Closer inspection reveals a complex training regime with dozens of subroutines and exercises.” “They are a call to apply an exercise. They are zombie memes that disembowel things that once had meaning, and instead of refilling them, they leave them filled with an emptiness that decries being filled.” “The people here are actually nice. “– Egeiros The concept seems related to the idea of holding space (Hope 2016 et al.) and further scholarly work needs to be done on this. A friendly zombie>>>

16. Images from /s4s/

17. Irony Across Cultures (Han) • Han (2002) argues that although irony across cultures seems inconceivable, it flourishes in literature. • Research done in psycholinguistics and linguistic anthropology suggests that the capacity to use irony is universal. • Shared values seem key in determining who gets irony and who does not, assuming that other factors are equal • Even supposing parties share requisite competencies and shared culture, there is no guarantee that irony will be successfully transmitted • Legitt and Gibbs (psycholinguistic researchers) found that “a complex set of social and communicative goals were achieved by speaking ironically, including being humorous, acting aggressively, achieving emotional control, elevating one’s social status, expressing attitudes, provoking reactions, mocking others, and muting the force of one’s meaning”.

18. Shifman and Thewall (2009) determined that “More than any previous medium, the Internet has the technical capabilities for global meme diffusion. Yet, to spread globally, memes need to negotiate their way through cultural and linguistic borders.” • In addition to human translators, the internet currently makes use of Google Translate and similar web devices for translation between languages. • Cultural translation is more difficult, but here is where the internet has stepped up to provide tools, including KnowYourMeme, Wikipedia, and discussion boards. As of the current date (May 2017), Reddit is not blocked in China, for instance (although it has been blocked at various times in the past).

19. In 2009, Shifman and Thewall published a study of the spread of a joke about husbands and wives across ten languages including English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Korean, and Italian. • They noted that while the joke stayed essentially the same, details of the joke were “glocalized.” • The essential stance and tone of the joke remained intact. • In Arabic-speaking versions, it was usually shared in English and sometimes accompanied by an apology for its seeming negativity toward marriage—the primary evidence of cultural resistance to the joke, although there was sharing (but it seemed marginalized by the lack of translation).

20. Dear Tech Support: Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0. I soon noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of space and valuable resources. In addition, Wife 1.0 installed itself into all other programs and now monitors all other system activity. Applications such as Poker Night 10.3, Football 5.0, Hunting and Fishing 7.5, and Racing 3.6 no longer run, crashing the system whenever selected. [. . .] ———- Reply ———- Dear Troubled User: This is a very common problem about which men are complaining. Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0, thinking that it is just a Utilities and Entertainment program. Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and is designed by its Creator to run EVERYTHING!!! It is also impossible to delete Wife 1.0 and to return to Girlfriend 7.0. It is impossible to uninstall, or purge the program files from the system once installed. [. . .]

21. Notable changes to the joke: • German: Sports references were changed, ie,  “NBA” and “Rugby” were replaced by German indicators such as Fussball- Bundesliga  (German premier league soccer) and Spotschau  (major German soccer TV show) • Portuguese: Sexual connotations were added, ie,  “lingerie 7.7” was changed inmost texts to “lingerie 6.9” (referring to a sexual-intercourse position). Other Portuguese/Brazilian elements in a few of the texts include names, sports (replacing Anglo American sports with Brazilian soccer campeonato brasileiro ), and food (Chopp , a beer common in Brazil, replaced beer) • Chinese: A wider range of alterations were made: Happy Hour changed to “bitter alcohol drinking” or “wandering in pubs,” ”hot food” changed to “delicious” or “gourmet” food, “lingerie” omitted or altered to “delicate” or “sexy” lingerie, “Poker Night” to “Mahjong.” • Arab-speaking countries: Omission of details alluding to pre-marital sex, absence of switching to female perspective (ie Husband 1.0), reluctance to translate from English, apology for the joke’s ”negativity” about marriage and family

22. In later work Shifman (2014) noted the evolution of a Western meme (The Successful Black Man) to an Israeli meme (Akiva the Humanist Ultra-Orthodox Man) • The underlying shared structure of the two memes shows a surprise upset to stereotypical expectations—both indications of ironic stances.

23. The Makmende Amerudi memeplex shows the importance of memes in forging national identities and stances for young Kenyans (Eklund and Tully (2013), Shifman (2014)) • When Just a Band released their “Ha-He” video in 2010, it was reminiscent of a 1970s Blaxploitation film, with a Shaft-like hero (Makmende) involved in exploits of power and romance. • It also alludes to Bruce Lee, The Matrix, Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry (the origin for Makmende being a variation on his “Make my day”), Japanese samurais, and Rambo. https://youtu.be/_mG1vIeETHc

24. “The dialogue is in Sheng, mentions a number of well known clubs in Nairobi, and uses popular slang such as “chips funga,” a double entendre for carryout french fries and a promiscuous woman. The video is modeled after an existing meme but is targeted to a Nairobi audience through its local references and culturally specific humor.” (Eklund and Tully 2013) • It was in part a response to the economic expansion and cultural opportunities afforded by the internet to Kenyans.

25. The Mud Grass Horse • Mina (2014) examines meme culture as avehicle for political and social critique in the context of China’sstringent web censorship and propaganda. She looks at social changememes that have arisen around internet censorship and in support ofthe blind lawyer activist Chen Guangcheng.

26. Cǎonímǎ , written with one set of characters and tones, means ‘grass mud horse’. • But càonǐmā(操你妈 ), written with different characters and pronounced with slightly different tones, is the more familiar colloquial phrase roughly translated as ‘fuck your mother’. • The grass mud horse cannot rest easily in the desert. It faces a mortal enemy, the dreaded héxiè  (河蟹 ), or river crab. • The hexie, of course, sounds similar to héxié (和谐 ), orharmony’. • “‘Harmony’ here references a 2006 Hu Jintao proposal to develop a ‘harmonious socialist society’ (Kahn, 2006). In the internet context, it meant further censorship under the Golden Shield Project, popularly known as the ‘Great Firewall’, a powerful censorship mechanism capable of filtering content from the outside world based on source and even keyword” (Mina 2014). • Instances depicting the image of the mud grass horse—a cute and cuddly innocent-looking creature—can serve as a subtle challenge to government censorship.

27. “Memes, as micro-actions of media remixing and sharing, are particularly important in a censored, propagandized state, which seeks first to isolate individuals who express opinions contrary to state interests, and then to deaden the sort of public debate that fosters a diverse sphere of opinion.”---Mina 2014

28. The blind lawyer and human rights activist Chen Guangcheng was alreadya leading light in activist circles by 2006, when he was arrested. By thetime he was released, Chinese social media sites like Sina Weibo (a microblogging site) and WeChat were already taking hold around the country. • He and his family were detained in his own home and he was basically blocked/erased from mention in all media in China. • He managed to drop a video online depicting their treatment through a smuggler. • After his whereabouts and situation became known globally, memes began to spread about it, including the online “sit-in” “selfie” project by CrazyCrab in 2011. • People were asked to send photos of themselves wearing sunglasses (representing Chen) to a central website which is still active.

30. Meme activity surrounding Chen continued to stay one step ahead of censorship by taking on many forms, including plays on his given name (which contains characters for “light and truth”) and remixes of Chen’s face with Colonel Sanders from Kentucky Fried Chicken that looked like ads for free chicken. • In-jokes appeared regularly on car bumpers, t-shirts and similar items. • Actor Christian Bale’s failed attempt to visit Chen in late 2011 culminated in a series of memes called “Pandaman versus Batman,” depicting a reported chase of Bale by a heavy-set security guard.

31. Globalism and Cultural Appropriation • Nakamura (2014) writes of a more sinister side of intercultural meme creation: the appropriation of racially marked bodies as “trophies” for mockery. • The premise for scambaiting websites is the well-known “Nigerian Prince” email scam that attempts to collect money from gullible Westerners. • In scambaiting, a potential victim engages the scammer in a series of conversations via email that end with a “deal” to “prove the sender’s humanity.” The scambaiter sends the scammer a series of explicit instructions to pose in humiliating photographs in order to obtain the requested bank credentials. • The scambaiter is invited to send their photographs to a website for public viewing. One of these sites has a page called “The Trophy Room.”

32. “Many of these images depict black people as sexualized, nude, debased, and queered figures. Photographs that depict African men posed with bananas or pickles in their mouths invoke a mockery of the homoerotic, mimicking oral sex. Images of arms tattooed with nonsensical or humiliating sayings like ‘I give bj’s’ or ‘Baited by Shiver’ can be found in the ‘Trophy Room’ as well; some of the most lively debates within the forum spaces where these are posted for the admiration of other scambaiters relates to whether the tattoo looks bloody and painful enough to be real rather than Photoshopped” (Nakamura 2014)

33. Nakamura argues that although Africa is part of the international meme culture, these photos do not appear to produce any value for the Africans but are “extracted as resources” for the consumption of Western viewing. She compares them to the lynching postcards that some middle-class whites used to collect and display on their mantels (Polchin) and images from Abu Ghraib.

34. A different example of stereotypical cultural appropriation in a racist meme is the balsamic rice looter captured in a take on “The World’s Most Interesting Man” theme (Rintel 2013). • Like the scammers, the thief seems caught in an unguarded moment and unaware of the possible ramifications of posing for the picture. • While the picture is undeniably humorous at first glance, it inscribes a tradition of mocking people of color without their consent, in these cases because they supposedly performed an infraction and “asked for it.” • The meme freezes the man’s race and criminality while erasing the conditions that might have driven him to this action.

35. The Alt-Right is taking a playbook from global censorship dissidents. • Alt-Right icon Milo Yiannopolous frames the “meme magic” as rising up against an oppressive PC culture of the left. (Yiannopolous was one of the major voices of Breibart until a recent scandal in which he appeared to support sex with underage boys.) In the video clip below, he embraces the “fun” and irony of the alt-right pitted against the oppressive “normie” culture of Clinton and her followers, perceived as “Social Justice Warriors.”

36. How to approach global memes in the classroom today? • Knobel and Lankshear’s list still holds up, focusing on meaning and social relations and providing students’ prompts for interacting with the meme in front of them • But this is not enough—memes beg to be examined as memeplexes that are driven by more than individual impulse, although they are never free of individual impulse and agency. • The argument that living, successful memes are training regimes for developing ways of being human is particularly intriguing. To analyze this requires lurking in social media forums that share, discuss, and evaluate memes. (Even if it stops being fun…!) • The centrality of irony indicates that we should be leading efforts to understand this powerful communication that appears to be universal and holds such sway in online culture. And now that it appears to affect our “real world” politics, it needs to be a part of literacy education. (Jonathan Swift would understand.)

37. Sources • Burroughs, Benjamin. “Obama Trolling: Memes, Salutes, and an Agonistic Politics in the 2012 Presidential Election.” The Fibreculture Journal, FCJ-165, Issue 22 2013. • Egeiros. “Memes Do Not Exist: Memetics as Anthropotechnics and the Zero-Entendre.” January 26, 2017. An Offensive Directed Against the Repetitious Mechanism of the Universe. https://www.apotheism.org/index.php/2017/01/26/memes-do-not-exist-memetics-as-anthropotechnics-and-the-zero-entendre/ • Eklund, Brian, and Melissa Tully. “Makmende Amerudi: Kenya’s Collective Reimagining as a Meme of Aspiration.” Journal of Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 21, issue 4, 2013, pp. 283-298. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2013.858823 • Han, Patricia S. ”Reading Irony Across Cultures.” Language and Literature, vol. 27, 2002, pp. 27-48. • Jenkins, Eric S, “The Modes of Visual Rhetoric: Circulating Memes as Expressions.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 100, no. 4, Nov. 2014, pp. 442-466. • Kress, Gunther R. Multimodality: a Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. Routledge, 2010.

38. Knobel, Michele, and Colin Lankshear. “Online Memes, Affinities, and Cultural Production.” A New Literacies Sampler. Chapter 9. Edited by Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear. Peter Lang, 2007, pp. 199-228. • Milner, Ryan M. “Hacking the Social: Internet Memes, Identity Antagonism, and the Logic of Lulz.” The Fibreculture Journal, FCJ-156, June 22, 2013. http://twentytwo.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-156-hacking-the-social-internet-memes-identity-antagonismand-the-logic-of-lulz/ • Mina, An Xiao. “Batman, Pandaman, and the Blind Man: A Case Study in Social Change Memes and Internet Censorship in China.” Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 13, no. 3, Dec. 2014, pp. 359-374. • Nakamura, Lisa. “I WILL DO EVERYthing That Am Asked: Scambaiting, Digital Show-Space, and the Racial Violence of Social Media.” Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 13, no. 3, Dec. 2014, pp. 257-274. • Rintel, Sean. “Crisis memes: The importance of templatability to Internet culture and freedom of expression.” Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 2, no. 2, 2013, pp. 253-271. • Shifman, Limor. Memes in Digital Culture. MIT Press, 2014. • Shifman, Limor, and Mike Thewall. “Assessing Global Diffusion with Web Memetics: The Spread and Evolution of a Popular Joke.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, vol. 60, no. 12, 2009, pp. 2567-2576.