Meditation for January 29th
Memes
When we are born, we inherit DNA. These are the genetic traits that make us who we are. We are also introduced to memes, cultural characteristics passed down from generation to generation. There are religious, national, and geographical memes. Being drawn to monogamous relationships is a meme, and the color of your eyes is from your DNA. Memes don’t have to be set in stone.
Today, memes are just idiotic pictures with words on them, found on Reddit, then on clickbait sites a month later, and finally, Time magazine will cover it a year later. We have Scumbag Steve, Overly Attached Girlfriend, Ancient Aliens Guy, Bad Luck Brian, Doge, and many others, all seen all over the internet. People even make them to make grave points about the direction culture is heading in and political opinions. A single Captain Picard facepalm meme has saved entire democracies.
That also means that meme jokes are getting more exclusive. The memes are based on an inside joke of an inside joke within an inside joke, and if you don’t get it, you don’t know. The new generation meme makers are the theater kids of yesteryear. These are not memes that represent cultural characteristics passed down through generations, but passed down by a few people within a week before being completely shunned. People have to act within a second or less with a funny meme after every news event, big or small, or they become obsolete.
I ended up at a party where a lot of people were in their early to mid-twenties. They were DJing the party by playing YouTube music videos. All of a sudden, these four kids were one-upping each other by trying to find the worst 80s song possible, but would only let about 20 seconds of a song play before jumping on and changing it to whatever they had just thought of. The rest of the party lost interest in the music and began trickling out. The four kids continued their shitty game, oblivious to the party moving away from them.
These memes, if a wider audience is going to find them funny or know what they mean, rely on our shared knowledge of symbols. Some say symbols are the language of the subconscious, and most people agree that these symbols have the same meanings across cultural divides. Even comic strips use this theory, so that you will understand what this small drawing means. The exclamation points over the head, or the lightbulb. These can be understood. When the memes lose their common symbolism, they lose their power and just become a small inside joke that means nothing a few hours later.
Prayer
Dearest Flying Spaghetti Monster
I know you are floating around space,
existing and stuff,
But there are these guys who believe in some dude named Yeah Way, his son Jay Suss, and his brother Holey Spar It.
Please find it in your noodle wisdom to smite these people.
They are driving the discourse in civilization,
and excluding people,
to the benefit of others.
Smite them in hot boiling water, strain, and then ladle hot tomato meat sauce on their wicked boiled bodies.
Amen.
Bonus Prayer
Allah Akbar,
you know who is super annoying?
Atheists.
They’d rather be right than accept.
They’d rather belittle and bully
than help others and build society.
If you really want to make the world a better place,
make them the target of your Fatwas.
Amen.
Craft
Find a picture of me and try to make me a famous Meme. The only rules are don’t be mean to me or anyone else. Just funny. Winner gets a high five.
Goal
Slow down. Slow down and listen to a whole album. Research where things come from. How did that come to be? Slow down and savor the world you live in instead of zipping through, only enjoying the cliff notes or the latest resurgence of something or another. If you like an artist, find out what their inspiration was and then trace back the inspirations. Read the whole article. Don’t ever get your opinion made up just by the headline and the picture.
Don’t be a fad whore. Be yourself.