Speaking of refactored agency, here’s an article covering the new subfield of neuroparasitology. Apparently it is fairly common for one organism to biochemically take over another and influence its behavior, so the host ends up acting in furtherance of its occupier rather than itself.
When I read this, I had a momentary flash of all the other, non-biochemical brain parasites that have infected me: all the ideas and goals I have played host to, concerns for money and status and respect and righteousness. All the people I ever knew and felt a need to impress. All the things in the world that attempt to snag my attention and have planted a symbolic seed in my head that draws me in their direction. All these are parts of me but they are also introjected mechanisms with their own interests, divergent from my own.
But it is probably wrong to say that there is a true self in there that is being infected by outside agents. More like I am constituted by this chaotic assemblage, which is no more or less than human culture.
Showing posts with label memetics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memetics. Show all posts
Monday, December 10, 2012
Saturday, August 01, 2009
How Dumb Spreads
If I had another life to spare I'd like to do research in memetic epidemiology -- how ideas spread and mutate through populations. Yesterday, Glenn Beck publicized a deeply moronic piece of hysteria -- that cars.gov, the Fed-run consumer site for the cash-for-clunkers program -- was the thin edge of a wedge of complete government takeover of everything on your computer!!!! Of course, there is approximately no basis. There is a bit of legalese on a page that is only for car dealers, consumers never even encounter the hideous piece of text that supposedly permanently hocks your computer's soul to Obama.
This looks like an interesting case, epidemiologically speaking. There appears to be a single source (Beck) and you can see it trickling slowly through the blogosphere. It's pretty easy to identify. Probably it won't spread too widely; even the wingnut sites have comments pointing out how silly it is.
What's amazing to me is the mainstreaming of this kind of stuff. It's one things for stupid memes to propagate over random blogs, but this is being instigated from a major television show, backed up by one of the largest media corporations. Kimberly Guilfoyle is if anything even more hysterical than Beck -- this is a woman who used to be an assistant DA and was wife to Gavin Newsome, mayor of San Francisco and likely next governor of California. People in stations like this used to have a smidgen of responsibility, but these people clearly haven't got the slightest interest in the truth, and are perfectly willing to spread bullshit if it helps stoke their narrative of the evils of the Obama administration.
Well, this meme will die out soon I predict. More significant winger memes include those the drive the birther movement (apparently infection rates in white Southerners are an astonishing 70% or higher) and the idea that that Obama's health care plan involves mass euthanasia of the elderly (some examples here and here). Ooooh, here is a neat convergence!
Gary Farber does a good job with this sort of thing. Here, for example, he tracks the fauxtrage over a photo from the recent white house beerfest. But he's just one man and is not using systematic techniques. We need some serious analytics applied to this stuff.
This looks like an interesting case, epidemiologically speaking. There appears to be a single source (Beck) and you can see it trickling slowly through the blogosphere. It's pretty easy to identify. Probably it won't spread too widely; even the wingnut sites have comments pointing out how silly it is.
What's amazing to me is the mainstreaming of this kind of stuff. It's one things for stupid memes to propagate over random blogs, but this is being instigated from a major television show, backed up by one of the largest media corporations. Kimberly Guilfoyle is if anything even more hysterical than Beck -- this is a woman who used to be an assistant DA and was wife to Gavin Newsome, mayor of San Francisco and likely next governor of California. People in stations like this used to have a smidgen of responsibility, but these people clearly haven't got the slightest interest in the truth, and are perfectly willing to spread bullshit if it helps stoke their narrative of the evils of the Obama administration.
Well, this meme will die out soon I predict. More significant winger memes include those the drive the birther movement (apparently infection rates in white Southerners are an astonishing 70% or higher) and the idea that that Obama's health care plan involves mass euthanasia of the elderly (some examples here and here). Ooooh, here is a neat convergence!
check out this perfectly usable (until the federal government got a hold of it) Volvo being purposefully destroyed because of this program...Imagine instead of a car purposefully being put to death its your grandmother or grandfather being put to death by the federal government.The euthanasia meme is going to go far, I predict. It just has the perfect combination of ingredients -- simple facts inflated wildly out of proportion, gruesomeness, paranoia, the invocation of sacred family ties. And seniors are easily manipulated.
Gary Farber does a good job with this sort of thing. Here, for example, he tracks the fauxtrage over a photo from the recent white house beerfest. But he's just one man and is not using systematic techniques. We need some serious analytics applied to this stuff.
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