The Case for Meme Research
We need to fund research on internet memes. Yes, I’m entirely serious about this.
Why do certain memes get popular and others don’t? How do memes spread? Are “weaponized memes” really a thing, and if so, how do we protect ourselves from them?
I think these are all very good questions, and right now there doesn’t seem to be very much research at all going into answering them. Why not?
In our modern age, social media has become a massive influence on society. Ideas spread rapidly and can in only a few hours influence millions of minds. Memes are being used to drive political campaigns (like Make America Great Again), and undoubtedly have a great impact on public opinion. So why are we not trying to better understand how this process works?
Research into this may help us better understand how to make information spread, as well as how to fight back against the spread of bad ideas. If a malicious person or organization starts spreading bad ideas in their memes to influence people, how do we fight back?
Clearly, more concise information spreads best (which is more likely to spread, a simple slogan, or a nuanced argument?), and information also changes as it spreads and becomes distorted through a big game of telephone. If we understand this process better, we may gain the ability to package our ideas in ways that they not only spread well, but maintain their original meaning for longer.
Understanding how our brains influence this process may also be interesting. Perhaps we could even narrow down on what calculations our brains are doing by looking at what ideas stay the same and which change as memes spread, and compare and contrast them with a variety of mathematical models of intelligence.
For example, researchers recently discovered that neural networks pay more attention to textures than shapes during image recognition, while humans do the opposite; a picture of elephant skin in the shape of a cat will appear as a cat to a human and an elephant to an AI. What can we learn from understanding how humans and AI differ on understanding more complex ideas? Could this not only let us peer into our own minds, but also the minds of the AIs now running the world?
And speaking of that, clearly which ideas spread on social media affects how memes spread. Right now that’s mostly managed with algorithms and AI. How does the way the AIs interpret our ideas affect which ideas spread?
So this is a call to action. We need to build a journal for meme research, and we need to pursue and fund meme research. Better understanding the nature of how ideas spread could provide us with great tools for understanding how to cope with the digital age, and deeper insight into ourselves.
Or at the very least, we may learn how to make even more dank memes.
