Weekend Reading : The Meme Generation
A hat tip to Andrew Sullivan who brought Matt Labash’s fabulous article The Meme Generation to my attention.* It’s one of those “Damn, I wish I’d written this!” kind articles, where Labash went to this year’s ROFL conference. (If you’re like me and you’ve never heard of the ROFL, it’s a convention where the people who are featured in viral videos gather, like the kid that complains that Charlie bit his finger, or the double rainbow guy. Basically, it’s like the Weezer Pork & Beans video, if the Weezer Pork & Beans video was a weekend in length and had a no-host bar.) If you have some extra time on the couch or hammock this weekend, I highly recommend it. It’s long for a web-article, coming in around 8,000 words. But it is fascinating, hilarious, and hammers home a point I often make to other new media champions:
You can only comment on recycled content in a finite circular universe for so long before you begin to lose all meaning.
For Labash this point is driven home by the meme-y world of mashups, photo captioning and the gajillion photos of cats on the internet. He sees these things not as a sign of a creative culture, but rather a culture that is OK with recycling crap over and over at the expense of creativity. While I suspect that he slightly oversteps, I see his point. I have similar feelings about the direction of journalism. The early promise was that the new media would provide millions of reporters and fact checkers, but it seems to me to have quickly devolved into a world where less and less value is placed on the expensive and tedious tasks of reporting the news, and more and more time is spent discussing what one pundit said about what another pundit said about this other thing this other pundit said.**
Here’s a quick snippet for your tasting pleasure:
I hang out with Tron Guy, aka Jay Maynard, from Fairmont, Minnesota. Maynard became Internet-famous for wearing an electroluminescent leotard modeled after the suit worn in the 1982 sci-fi filmTron. After photos were posted in an online forum that he “expected about 500 people to see,” he shot up the media food chain, pictures of his costume proliferating on sites like Slashdot. This resulted in juicier pop-culture plums, like making appearances on Jimmy Kimmel and being parodied on South Park.
Maynard has the same model of hockey helmet used in the original film. The rest of the costume, which lights up like a futuristic Christmas tree, he had custom-made at Renaissance Dancewear, a retailer where he used to buy tights for his Renaissance Fair costumes. He painted Kmart boat shoes to match. A swatch of Lycra on his chest is frayed where he errantly cut it. But he’s proud that eight years later, it still fits. “My weight’s been pretty constant,” he says. “But it stretches. As long as I don’t gain 30 pounds, I don’t think it makes any difference.”
It was difficult being famous at first. As anyone who spends time on the Internet knows, it’s an ugly, ruthless place, a snakepit where anonymity absolves people of responsibility, not to mention human decency. It’s a place that can bring out the inner troll even in your kindly, genteel grandmother. True, as the tech triumphalists often crow, everyone now has a voice. It’s become an article of faith that this is an advance we should all be grateful for. Yet about 50 percent of those voices, at any given moment, seem to want to say nothing more than, “You suck.”
At first, Maynard says, all his attention was troll-fueled: “It was, ‘Look at that guy in spandex!’ It wasn’t any fun.” But with the Kimmel appearances, he achieved a modicum of respect, even if he only ever made scale, moneywise. “They gave me the chance to talk about who I am.”
Who he is these days is an old meme, no easy fate to swallow. The folks at ROFLcon still love him like you love your eccentric uncle, but he doesn’t even rate a speaking slot. If you think regular fame is fleeting, Internet fame can move much faster, as the culture thrives on disposability, our overstimulated appetites for novelty now as boundless as our attention spans are short.
Maynard’s had a bad run lately. His computer consulting business dried up in the Great Recession. The Kimmel spots disappeared too, causing his agent to ditch him. An amateur pilot, Maynard had to give up his single-engine plane, and he’s teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Disney wanted nothing to do with him, promotions-wise, when Tron: Legacy premiered in 2010. And the capper: Maynard was banned from seeing the sequel at his local theater in costume, for fear the Tron suit’s lights would distract patrons.
He’s philosophical about what’s happened. When his visage first hit meme-spreading websites like Slashdot and Fark, “I learned a lesson from Star Wars Kid,” says Maynard. Star Wars Kid may be the most famous of all viral videos. A plus-size kid made a video of himself in a very intense light saber fight with an imaginary opponent, which unkind classmates uploaded without his consent, scarring him for life. The video is hilarious, of course. But imagine the most embarrassing thing you ever did as a 15-year-old. Now imagine a video of it getting 25,522,542 YouTube views, which is what Star Wars Kid’s video garnered. “There’s no getting rid of it,” Maynard continues. “You’re not going to be able to clean it off the Internet. So I’m sitting on a tiger. I have two choices. I can either jump off and hope he doesn’t turn around and eat me. Or I can grab his ears and enjoy the ride.”
But after riding the tiger, there’s a problem with his Internet fame, Maynard says: “What do I do with it? I’ve never really come up with a good answer to that. I really understand why movie stars get hooked on drugs. While you’re big, everybody wants to tell you how wonderful you are. Then all of a sudden, nobody wants to talk to you.” A young conference volunteer asks us to move. We’re blocking the registration line. I tell her to show some respect. This isn’t just any schmuck she’s dealing with. This is Tron Guy.
Pull it up on your reader, sit back and spend 20 or 30 minutes with this gem. You’ll be really glad you did.
*(Mind you, it appears that Sullivan had either misread or maybe not read the entire article, but still… plus an extra hat tip to him for being the one to post Labash’s pointing it out.)
** I’ve been thinking more and more about this subject, and as a result this weekend I intend to do one of the existentially scariest things I have ever done before. I have TIVOed the top three rated shows from both FOX and MSNBC, and in an effort to see what partisan cable TV is really bringing to the table will be watching all six (holy mother of God, six!) hours of the stuff and write about what I find. Pray for me.
I have similar feelings about the direction of journalism.
I have similar feelings toward the I-V-IV progression and 12-bar blues.
Makes me puke.Report
“You can only comment on recycled content in a finite circular universe for so long before you begin to lose all meaning.”
The most recycled piece of content is the “it’s not real art” screed, which is seen with every new cultural development.Report
I’m not so sure about that; as evidenced by my own monochromatic movement.
Succinctly, monochromatic art is a square depicting one shade of undifferentiated color.
But the titles are magnificent; eg Glint of the Spear-Tip of Patrochlos in Deadly Confrontation with Hector at the Gates of Troy, a solid block of nothing but purest white.
The idea is that it is really only the very glint of the spear-tip that interests people anyway, and so only this portion will be depicted.
The art itself is really in the manner of thinking up the fanciful names for what otherwise might pass as carpet samples.
But it was really conceived as a mockery of modern art.Report
I prefer Shadow of the Eagle Approaching Prometheus in Chains, by the same artist.Report
I’ve outdone Damien Hirst with my latest construction: a black painting called “What Can Be Seen from the Inside of a Cow”Report
+1.Report
“TIVOed the top three rated shows from both FOX and MSNBC”
Egads…..i hope you have insurance.
FWIW, i haven’t watched any MSNBC in 3 or so years, but Maddow is far better then all of them and not as comically partisan.Report
My problem with this perennial is the utter lack of contrast to what came before. It’s not like most people were creative visionaries before the rise of Internet cat photos. In fact, if your goal is to get people to create culture rather than just consume it ala TV, memes are no doubt a step forward.Report
even though in the history of the internet zines and “zine culture” is lionized (in part because the history of the internet has thus far been written by zinesters), but a good 99% of all zines were as aggressively stupid and insular as lolcats, etc. what’s changes is the speed of transmission.
the real tragedy here is the changing of dawkin’s useful metaphor for cultural transmission (taken way too far, as labash notes, angrily) into whatever you want to call this stuff. and that labash ignores the incredible increase in access (largely due to self publishing/promotion) to all the traditional forms of art, especially music. this would seem to completely undercut his larger point, except his real point is “lolcats are dumb” – we are as one on that topic. (still kind of a fan of gooby plz though)Report
Robertson Davies: To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man’s speech with other men’s jewels; dangerous, for the same reason.
Most of this Meme-ing is borrowed ornamentation, attempting to glom onto another’s glory through the Miracle of Trackbacks. But there’s no denying those jewels are indeed glorious and lose none of their lustre in quotation.
Labash errs greatly in saying this New Dumbness. It’s ancient, hoary dumbness. It’s afflicted mankind since a few humorous Egyptians had some fun at Tourist Herodotus’ expense, saying the ibex had only one horn, thus giving us the legendary unicorn. I feel certain half the legends started out as jokes. As for kitty videos, the Egyptians were the biggest kitty fans of all time, sincerely mourning their moggies and embalming them in their thousands.
He rolls his eyes in vain, does Labash, a tiresome Young Fogey if ever there was one, afflicted by the very Nostalgic Malaise he so plaintively moans about, like some demented Smoove Jazz Saxophonist who has never learned to play beyond the natural key of his instrument.
As someone who posted a YouTube video which has now gone to 337,211 views, I’ve gotten some interesting email over time. None of those images were mine. Nor was the music. It was hardly my fault some people find it haunting and beautiful. All I wanted was to show something I found beautiful. Got a nice note from the guy who took those images, says it helped the sales of his book. But more importantly, I got a message from YouTube, saying they’d noticed how popular my video had become. They offered me an option to run an ad in front of that video. I refused. They weren’t my images and it wasn’t my music and I had glommed both without attribution though I did give extensive credits and urged people to buy both the book and the music.
That’s what memes are all about, kiddies. Page loads.
So here comes Matt Labash, with three page loads to read the whole of his little screed, featuring at least three ads per load, to crank up his own Meme-o-Matic, snarkily intoning his intellectual superiority “He still reads books (books!)“. Gosh, I sure wish I was as bolted-in as Matt Labash.Report
“You can only comment on recycled content in a finite circular universe for so long before you begin to lose all meaning.”
Reminds me of this line by George Trow: “The work of television is to establish false contexts and to chronicle the unraveling of existing contexts; finally, to establish the context of no context and to chronicle it.”
Of course, television is what came before the Internet, and the Internet is the television-steeped culture talking back about its ideas and interests. For the most part, it looks like you’d expect it to.Report
There’s something that gets in the fabric of people’s souls with memes.” These aren’t just Internet-fame’s lottery winners, says Lashes. “The memes are art. This is the kind of s— Warhol prophesied.”
Everybody knows the “in the future, everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes” line but he got sick of hearing it really, really quick. He stopped saying it and started saying “in fifteen minutes, everyone will be famous.”
Looks like we’re here.Report
Everyone will be famous and broke.Report
I kept thinking about “The Context of No Context” as I wandered around Vegas, which seems to be the municipal instantiation of the concepts expressed therein.Report
I read the book over a decade ago and still find myself frequently thinking of it.Report
1) Being parodied by “South Park” is the very antithesis of a “plum” in Russellworld. I would rather be dragged across carpet tacks and dipped in rubbing alcohol.
2) This is one of those subjects that makes me wish David Foster Wallace were still around to write an essay about it. *sigh*
3) I can’t watch either MSNBC or Fox, though I find the former marginally more tolerable. I appreciate your taking one for the team, buddy, and will start soliciting recommendations for good mental health providers in the Portland area now so you can transition right into intensive psychotherapy when it’s all over.Report
“You can only comment on recycled content in a finite circular universe for so long before you begin to lose all meaning.”
This reminds me of some of the conversations around here on deconstruction . It’s true as far as it goes that you can only deconstruct something so far before you need to start constructing something, but that only goes so far.
I agree with the ‘Young Fogey’ criticism of this piece. Even if they are derivative – because who isn’t – the meme-basers are being intellectually active in the way that cultural critics have long derided the masses for explicitly not being (“All your Vast Wastelands are belong to us”). Like Fnord said, this criticism is not new, and it’s not even correct. Heck, Chaucer and Shakesphere were meme generators and remixers par excellence.Report
My problem with this criticism is that it seems to take a phenomenally rare truth and assumes it universal. It is indeed true that Mozart was not appreciated for his true genius in his time; it does not therefore follow, however, that all people that are not appreciated as geniuses are the next Mozart. (Similarly, just because many scientists initially scoffed at the theories of relativity does not make creationism the equivalent of E=MC2.)
When I look at people that clip together, say, every time Fonzie says “Aaaay!” into a 20 minute mashup (or whatever), I am not reminded of the advent of TV or the novel so much as I am that hipster art form of my college years: performance art. Each kind of assumes that you can approach art by quickly throwing together a few random ideas with vert little creative work; that the very fact that anyone could have done it regardless of experience or talent level (which just ain’t the case with Chaucer and Shakespeare) assumes that it is therefore artistically “edgy.” And like performance art, it is assumed that “old people just don’t get it” and that one day the young hipsters will have the last laugh. And maybe that’s true. Maybe in 20 years, you’ll be taking your children to see a live stage reenactment of a guy redoing every time Fonzie ever said “Ayyyy!” Tickets will be almost impossible to get if you don’t “know someone.” But I suspect these things will end up being closer to scrapbooking (i.e.: things that people do for personal hobby every now and then) and will not be seen as “art.”Report
We worry often around here about drawing false equivalences between the left and the right. It would be good not to draw them between the past and present either.Report
Um… how is me comparing mashups to performance art a false equivalent, but comparing mashups to Shakespeare and Chaucer not? Confused.Report
I was agreeing with you.Report
Boy, am I touchy today or what? Sorry for misunderstanding!Report
Not a problem. Communicating by comment boxes is like sliding notes under the door. It gets confusing.Report
Of course they’re not equivalent to Chaucer and Shakespeare. You get one Shakespeare in a generation, and that’s if you’re lucky.
But a drama club putting on a Shakespeare play (who borrowed that plot from Author Brooke and William Painter, who in turn were taking from an Italian story, all based on a theme that goes back to antiquity, and incidentally has been further adapted by such talentless hacks as Stephen Sondheim, and how’s that for remixing). Geniuses? Probably not. Somebody going to be watching a recording of that performance 20 years from now, or even 5? Only their mothers.
So what does that make the guy sitting in a back saying they’ve got nothing on the Royal Shakespeare Company, and they should write their own damn play anyway?Report
I would say that you are 100 % correct, that the mashup guy is the equivalent to a community theatre production of You Can’t Take It With You.
My understanding is that those people are not being flown to MIT amid discussions that they are somehow the new edgy art form that we must pay attention to. If your assertion is as you state above, I do not think Labash’s criticisms are directed in your direction.Report
Every university has a drama club or three; there are numerous statewide community theatre festivals. The American Association of Community Theatre certainly has nationwide conferences. Every community needs a support network. I doubt most community theatres send even one person to a national conference on a regular basis, but it’s not like everyone who ever slapped a caption on a picture of a cat was in Cambridge, either.
As Labash himself admits, ROFLcon isn’t taking itself too seriously (unlike Labash). I didn’t hear about this until Labash wrote an article and you linked to it. The only person demanding people pay attention is Labash, so he can tell everyone how superior he is to the “New Dumbness”.Report
Fnord says here exactly what I was getting at. I’m increasing disdainful of those who disdain other peoples hobbies, especially when the hobbyist approaches them with passion and joie de vivre. Of course (the vast vast majority of) it is not high art, so what? High artists are as rare as a snowflake on the moon, or an honest politician in Washington.Report
I would pivot off Tod’s second paragraph into a criticism of avante garde culture more broadly.
One of the proudest achievements of the modern art movement was to break the grip of the cultural authorities to define art; art could be whatever the artist wished it to be.
Or so the history books tell us. In fact,what happened was that the defining authority of culture was moved from Church and State and popular opinion, to simply the peer group approval of fellow artists; if gallery owners and academics said your work was important, then it was. If they didn’t, it wasn’t. The Church and popular opinion didn’t matter anymore.
The internet memes and mashups are a continuation of this trend, except it is now transferring cultural authority away from gallery owners and academics, via the internet; if enough people declare your Fonzi mashup to be Relevant and Meaningful, then it is.Report
I’ve a theory that societies that lose authority as a common cultural currency eventually make power their common currency.
(Actually, I’m pretty sure others have had the same theory before.)Report
I would have said “money” rather than power (though money being the common currency does sound redundant.) This is especially true in films, where there are no more Pauline Kael or Vincent Canby figures; the closest thing left is the wonderful but extremely middle-brow Roger Ebert. In general, the only thing that’s written about a film is how much money it made. The second Star Wars trilogy is more familiar and more often discussed than most of the good films of the previous decade, even though there’s almost universal agreement that they were terrible, purely because they made so damned much moneyReport
I suppose I was thinking of money as close enough to a synonym to be implied by the word ‘power’. Maybe I’m thinking of Trow again, and his idea that the most important cultural question in nearly every situation is becoming “Who won?”Report
I think we’re in violent agreement.Report
Incidentally, it’s funny you mention her because I’ve been thinking of Kael a lot lately . I’ve an acquaintance who ‘s working on the Quentin Tarantino slave movie and I keep getting these Facebook updates about it and getting more depressed, mainly because it sounds like a complete travesty in the making, but since there aren’t any reviewers around (that I know of) who write that way about the cultural, moral, or historical meaning of films, I suspect the travesty factor will be overlooked in lieu of lengthy reviews about how cool the soundtrack was and which characters “kicked some serious ass”.Report
And how much money it makes. (Not to beat a dead horse, or anything.)Report
The new yorker? Armand white?
Heck the onion av club is pretty solid.
I’d have more examples but i only watch documentaries about fonts.Report
In addition to “Within the Context of No Context,” this all makes me think about Screwtape discussing the causes of laughter. We can laugh for joy, we can laugh from fun, we can laugh at a joke, and we can laugh at flippancy.
This is all just so much flippancy, with joy pretty damn thin on the ground.Report
“more and more time is spent discussing what one pundit said about what another pundit said about this other thing this other pundit said”
I find this phrase contextually ironic, because I came to the Labash article hoping for something more insightful and less caught up in itself than Lanier’s _You Are Not a Gadget_ (which I finished reading a week or two ago), and then found that it’s basically a rehash of / paean to Lanier, with a fresh set of those-internet-people-are-weird anecdotes to hang the arguments on.
*sighs her most tired-old-curmudgeonly sigh*Report
Had the same thought about Maureen Dowd’s column. She seldom generates original content, but this week seemed worse than ever, only a handful of original sentences and the majority of the column quoting other pundits who are souring on President Obama.
Now that the water seems safe, it looks like she’s contemplating paddling out herself.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/dowd-dreaming-of-a-superhero.html?_r=1&ref=opinionReport
“** I’ve been thinking more and more about this subject, and as a result this weekend I intend to do one of the existentially scariest things I have ever done before. I have TIVOed the top three rated shows from both FOX and MSNBC, and in an effort to see what partisan cable TV is really bringing to the table will be watching all six (holy mother of God, six!) hours of the stuff and write about what I find. Pray for me.”
What shows??? Maybe a group of us can all do this together, book club style, and post a roundtable discussion on the matter! The more ideologically diverse, the better!Report