Speaking of oblique language communicating a variety of things, not all of them intended

From a using-language-for-communication perspective, I've always hated memes.

I'm not being hyperbolic; my first exposure to what is now a proper "meme culture" (blech) was just as another form of referential speech, used to build community between those in the know and those -- like me -- who weren't. Memes have always had the same effect as jokes (in that if you don't get the punch line, you're automatically excluded) except they also didn't have structural or vocabulary rules, so there was not even a way to make peace with them and understand that something was a meme from context like the way you can with jokes. They stress me out, and for the longest time I though there was zero legitimate reason to engage in memetic speech.

(And this is where the linguists who follow me are like "that's not how it works", and I feel your pain -- I'd use a better word for this whole fucking nonsense but "meme" is the one internet chose so now we all get to be mad about how that's so imprecise as to be useless.)

Internet memes are the ultimate example of the tendency of people to substitute common ground for real communication, and refusing to clarify whether they're speaking metaphorically or not. It's a nuance I'm not capable of picking up on my own in any instance, and it's also a nuance that is lost between groups -- a problem I solve by being as straightforward and as exact as I possibly can, which has historically opened me up to a lot of mockery. People say laughing brings us together, but what with how specific humour is to a group, jokes aren't integrative unless you're willing to explain them.

And, like, ngl, it made me feel like a freak even by ND standards, because almost every other ND I know loves the shit out of memery.

I don't get it. On an emotional level, I just don't get it.

However on a practical level, I've come to accept that a) for some people, the ability to signal themselves as a part of a group is important and b) memes are a super easy socially acceptable way to scratch the echolalia itch. Combine that with absurdism coming easily to ND folks whose brains are already wired for pattern-recognition, and it makes sense to me that so many ND love memes.

But I still really fucking hate them. I hate the way anything can be a meme, and that anything can become a meme.I hate the way language gets sloganeered, which makes discussing things harder, especially when it happens to generic concepts. I get so frustrated with peopple who rely on repeating memes and their emotional cache, without seemingly understanding that their reliance on this uncommon "common code" immediately makes them incomprehensible and offputting for people who do not speak in that code. It insulates them from people who don't already think like them, watch all the same media, hang out in the same ever-constricting social circles.

I feel like a lot of wank persists entirely because people keep repeating the language they picked up when they first saw it, creating a memetic association to the topic, and not once think that by changing the language, they change the discussion. Like, my latest rage about people entirely unthinkingly repeating anti rhetoric is a really nice nutshell about why this is a problem. Not to mention, for me someone speaking in meme-laden language is someone who's just sending out powerful signals of "I'm desperate to belong and will do anything to fit in" -- and at this point, I find that a pretty fucking unsafe feature in a person.

And even if a part of me accepts that using memes well is just like using allegory well -- it can condense complicated ideas, bypass literal understanding to speak directly to the unique experience someone may have -- I refuse to believe that "meme culture" (blech) is truly anything but another elaborate surface level of easy us-vs-them distinction, and I resent being forced to engage in it.

Further assorted angry meme thoughts

The irony of course is that good meme usage is one of those "I know it when I see it" type of things. There is an art to getting the context, meaning, cultural cache and intent right, and just like my point about good memeing being like good allegory, it all comes down to finding some kind of a communicational fault line that lets you slip from one code into another and back without disturbing the flow of the conversation.

And, that's another reason why I can see why ND people gravitate towards memes, other than the easy camaraderie -- it's a really good way to practice code-switching and what I tend to think of as "speaking registers". I remarked in the tags of the Tumblr repost that every time I've slapped down for substituting reference for communication, I honestly feel like I've deserved it, but that it's in that category of things my developmental delays didn't allow me to grok on my own, and I'm always gonna be a little bit sour about it.

My bad experiences with highly referential second-code communications have always been bad, and I do mostly feel comfortable blaming the need for a second code for it, because in the instances of people I know who are memelords that I get along with, they don't rely on that second code when they're truly trying to make themselves understood. Again, on Tumblr I called it "false familiarity", and their refusal to rely on it is why I make that distinction, and where my whole understanding of integrative language comes from -- because there's no reliance on a common reference point, and no need for me to do a lot of translating (or alternatively just go "fuck it" and let the language stand on its own)

And then there's just. In general that I really only had this realisation when I was reading a conversation about "How To Radicalise A Normie" and the way both fiction police and the alt-right rely on reductive, dogwhistley language to signal belonging and exclusion, and how that shapes the perception both inside and outside of the group of the severity of the situation. It made me realise this isn't a problem endemic to just one group, it's just what evermore elaborate language games do to everyone.

And it's kind of... like, I'm someone who doesn't get metaphors unless I'm the one making them, because then the whole context is ready and apparent to me and I can say something reasonably accurate. And I've always thought that that's just something that's wrong with me? But looking at how language evolves on the internet, I'm starting to wonder if that's not just true for everyone else as well, and other people just don't care if what they're saying is actually what they mean, unless it makes sense to them inside their heads.

>:(

The other side of the meme equation is that memes as "vulgar" art? Is actually genuinely a thing I find spectacular and beautiful, much for the same reasons I find a lot of conceptual art spectacular and beautiful.

The proliferation of meme humour and the whole subclass of reaction/"relatable" images feels dramatically equalising between different groups of people, and the way people all seem to pick on the same and sort out which ones truly reflect their own feelings is always pretty awe-inspiring. The way people use existing memes and combine or reinvent them has produced some of my favourite art works in the past ten years.

And it suuuuuuucks that all that creative potential seems to go nowhere with most people. Like, can you use art wrong? Because that definitely feels like a misuse of art, and when it's a primarily internet-based and maker-controlled form of artwork, it being used "wrong" is all the more depressing.

Binge-reading can also be bad

Sometimes I wonder if I should get a tattoo that just says "rubbing your face in your worst anxieties is a form of self-harm"

Getting all the salt out: robot edition

Ohhhhhh I finally figured out why the IDW TF fandom specifically comes across so obnoxious and self-involved that it's put me off reading the comics simply because I don't want to hang out with any of them.

It's the treatment of IDW canon as the only canon that truly matters, or acting like the canon potpourri applies less to IDW than it does to other continuities.

And because they have this attitude, almost all of them act like tagging something just as "Transformers" is sufficient, because if it applies to IDW, it must be somehow universal, right? Like, IDW isn't a "reinterpretation" like those other continuities, it is "the canon" now instead of G1 and it's the one that we should all refer to, right? Nobody would ever need an IDW tag for blacklisting as a whole, only for the individual books because everyone knows what those are, right?

... of course, like, this isn't the actual attitude by anyone in the IDW fandom (or at least I real fucking hope so), but rather it's the sense I get when people consistently treat their continuity as the continuity, and not as something fungible the way the other continuities are, probably because I had some early run-ins with people who told me I was doing it wrong by sticking to Aligned canon, just because the comics had different opinions about that.

Translating my own stenography is exhausting, though

I'm really hoping my creative verve lasts until I manage to write some Robot Meta.

I do have one that's mostly outlined.