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Hello TeamFamSquad,
Let’s dive right into Stratechery’s Gamestop piece from last week, Mistakes and Memes. It mirrors many of the topics I wrote about in #42.
First, both Ben and I note how memes must meet needs. Ben writes about Tesla meeting Future Us needs for sustainability and Future Me needs for meaning:
Tesla means something: yes, it stands for sustainability and caring for the environment, but more important is that Tesla also means amazing performance and Silicon Valley cool.
Second, once a meme meets needs, it must connect to money or IRL events to survive long-term. I wrote:
A meme needs to compel its host to share the meme. Bitcoin spreads because users are financially incentivized to share it.
Another powerful meme property is to encourage in-person phenomena. #MeToo canceled many celebrities, #BLM encouraged epic protests, and #StopTheSteal manifested as storming the US Capitol. These IRL impacts get posted online, which spreads the meme more, leading to more IRL impacts.
Ben shares a similar perspective—memes must connect to infrastructure:
That’s the thing with memes: on their own they are fleeting; like a virus, they primarily have an impact if they infiltrate and take over infrastructure that already exists.
The reason why Trump was successful was because he managed to infiltrate and take over infrastructure — the Republican Party — that already existed.
TSLA was itself a meme, one about a car company, but also sustainability, and most of all, about Elon Musk himself. Instead of infrastructure leading to a movement, a movement, via the stock market, funded the building out of infrastructure.
But Ben also adds something that I missed in my analysis; memes mean different things to different people.
Gamestop was a meme: its meaning was anything, and everything, evolving like oral traditions of old, but doing so at the speed of light.
Joe Biden could simultaneously embrace the Green New Deal on his campaign website while insisting he didn’t support it in a debate. A meme can be whatever you want it to be.
The power of memes is not simply the amount of information they convey, but the malleability with which they convey it. They have shades of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, in that the very meaning of a meme is altered based on where it is encountered, and from whom. It’s meaning can be anything, and everything.
Memes are lenticular: they look different from different perspectives. To some, Bitcoin meets basic needs. To others, it meets a need for meaning. To others, it meets a need for community.
If a meme is too one-dimensional, it won’t spread as easily.
As my friend Jacob wrote:
The point about 'mutating/capturing' memes is really important, along with the idea that everyone is touching the meme elephant at the same time and seeing it from the unique POV / 'side of the meme' that they bring to it. I think BLM and gamestonk are great examples of that; basically every person has their own relationship with BLM (whether 'black', or 'blue', or both). From a psychology/therapy point, I guess this would mean that memes are vehicles for both group meaning and immensely personal 'projection'; much more so than a written text which isn't as malleable and evocative.
To summarize:
Memes that meet human needs will virally propagate
But to survive, they need to exploit existing infrastructure (politics, money)
Lenticular memes spread faster
One final note: Ben (finally) referenced Zeynep’s Twitter and Tear Gas. This book gives a crucial framework for understanding internet phenomena through signals vs. capacities. If you haven’t checked it out yet, here’s my review of the book.
LINKS
1) Last week we shared the first legally recognized cyborg. This week, I want to share my friend Matt’s cyborg experiment. He has a cyborg hand that you can give you NFTs:
2) Your monthly US-centric COVID content:
Even though COVID prevalence in the US is (relatively) low right now, expect it to get much higher near the end of March. This is from our friend B117.
Right now, r(t) in the US is 0.82. But B117 is only 5% of cases. B117 will eventually be 100% of cases. It is roughly 50% more infectious, so when it’s 100% of cases, r(t) will be 0.82*1.5 = 1.23. It may not sound like much, but r(t) was only 1.23 during the giant wave last fall. An r(t) above 1 has made scary exponential graphs across Europe.
When will the “final” B117 surge happen? B117 is 5% of cases right now and doubling every 10 days. So it’ll be:
10% by Feb 25
20% by March 7
40% by March 17
80% by March 27
Emotionally prepare yourself for one final surge, check this site for B117 prevalence, and hope the vaccines can race it.
(The graph below has SGTF prevalence, which is a near proxy for B117.)
3) COVID inequality is awful awful awful.
45% of poor folks in developing countries had to decrease how many daily meals they ate. OxFam estimates it will take poor folks 9 years to financially recover, versus 9 months for rich folks.
It really feels like rich and poor folks are operating at different trophic levels. Sigh.
4) Damning NYT piece from Ezra Klein: California Is Making Liberals Squirm.
In Ibram X. Kendi’s book “How to Be an Antiracist,” he argues that it is policy outcomes, not personal intent, that matter. “Racist policies are defined as any policy that leads to racial inequity. It’s all about the fundamental outcome.”
In California, taking that standard seriously might mean worrying less about the name on the school than whether there are children inside it. It might mean worrying less about the sign in the yard than the median home price on the block.
Politics has become an aesthetic rather than a program.
Be wary of low-effort symbols that are disconnected from high-effort reality!
5) The Onion: Study: 95% Of ESPN.com Visits Habitual
6) Babylon Bee: 'I Would Have Spoken Up About The Holocaust,' Says Man Who Is Silent On China's Concentration Camps
JOBS AND OPPORTUNITIES
Variant Fund is investing in the Ownership Economy and is hiring a Research Analyst.
Matter is a great new app for curating your Twitter feed. They are hiring a Senior iOS developer.
Hive.one is PageRank for Twitter. They’re hiring a Tech Lead.
Our World in Data is hiring a full-stack developer.
Are you under 25 and want to change your trajectory? Get a free $2,500 through this Trajectory Change Grant.
The Long Now Foundation is looking for volunteer CPAs to be a Financial Committee Advisor or Audit Committee Advisor.
XPrize is hosting Elon Musk’s $100M prize for carbon removal. They’re giving $1M grants to 15 teams and $200k grants to 25 student teams. More details announced on Earth Day. Learn more and sign up here for updates. (Help lower the green premium!)
Heterodox Academy is giving $30,000 grants for folks pushing independent discourse.
The Aspen Tech Policy Hub Fellowship helps technologists learn how to enact tech policy. It’s a YC for tech policy. The program is full-time, 10-weeks, and has an 18k stipend. Learn and apply here by Feb 22.
Clubhouse is hiring two Trust & Safety Analysts.
Open Philanthropy is hiring a Farm Animal Welfare Program Associate. 70B land animals are factory farmed every year. Help make that less!
Ask HN: Who is hiring? for Feb 2021.
I’m looking for a driven and concrete co-founder for Roote. Learn more and reach out here.
EVENTS
Effective Altruist Events Calendar (recurring)
Interintellect Salons (recurring)
The Stoa (recurring)
MUSIC
I love these videos that mix many singers into one. This video has 500 people. It’s like SeaShantyTikTok, but in parallel not in sequence.
Related: Jacob Collier is a master at acapella harmony video. He does one of my favorite Beatles’ covers:
Acapella Science does acapella harmony video while also teaching us science:
Hope you have a good week! Warmth, Rhys
❤️ Thanks to my generous patrons ❤️
Audra Jacobi, Sam Jonas, Patrick Walker, Shira Frank, David Hanna, Benjamin Bratton, Michael Groeneman, Haseeb Qureshi, Jim Rutt, Zoe Harris, David Ernst, Brian Crain, Matt Lindmark, Colin Wielga, Malcolm Ocean, John Lindmark, Collin Brown, Ref Lindmark, James Waugh, Mark Moore, Matt Daley, Peter Rogers, Darrell Duane, Denise Beighley, Scott Levi, Harry Lindmark, Simon de la Rouviere, and Katie Powell.