Memes - those horizontal-moving notions, slogans, phrases that take hold of the public and private conversations for a time, often to disappear and sometimes to hang around. Often now political. Sometimes true, sometimes not. And who can tell most of the time?
In November 2019, Edgeryders Fellow Zenna Fiscella Interviewed PhD student Max Schlüter who is on a quest to find the nature of memes, how they propagate, who propagates them most successfully and what makes them work where others fail. It’s a deep dive and he is early in his adventure, but he has already uncovered a number of salient points on the matter. Zenna brings in how memes influence the commercial world. Are some of these propagations paid for?
(Posted with written permission)
Zenna:
Welcome to the second episode of EdgeRyders. Today we have max Schlüter with us who’s a PhD student with a focus on…
Max:
Memetics, dis-information and the organizational practice surrounding them.
Zenna:
Yes. To translate that into non academic terminology, that is…
Max:
I’m looking at memes basically, from right wing and also left wing extremists, how they use to disinform and shape public discourse.
Zenna:
via memes, yes.
Max:
via memes, yes.
Zenna:
Okay. So this is very curious. It’s a new practice. To start off just to get an introduction, how does one study that?
Max:
People have looked at memes for longer than you might expect. I think the term itself has been around for around 20 or 30 years and it initially started out in the science fiction scene, like many things started out. But then academic papers have been written around memes starting 2010 ish earlier as well but like the ones I’m really focusing on are Schiffman hailing out of Israel, she’s been writing about good 10 years now about memes and how they used and memes and disinformation or memes and as a as a media practice to dis-inform and to shape public discourse. I’ve been also five years within a discourse. But for me, it’s more important to look at the people behind it so I’m not more having more ethnographic approach.
Zenna:
So for those of a different generation, or for those who simply don’t meme very much, how extensive are memes and how extensive do you believe they are shaping online culture today?
Max:
“how extensive” - in what way do you mean?
Zenna:
like, Is it very common?
Max:
Memes, yes. The term itself - like the definition of the term is kind of very loose like it like a lot of things, and it kind of varies from person to person what a meme is, it can be a inside joke can be declared a meme, it can be the very traditional image macro of like image and text on top. That could be considered a meme. Short videos or haikus can be considered memes. And they’re kind of all encompassing in digital culture. I would say that they penetrate a lot of different discourses and groups. And that’s why it’s so interesting to look at memes because they are everywhere. Everybody uses them. And I just read a very interesting article yesterday about about metaphors. And they had one metaphor to describe memes from Whitney Phillips, I think, was as a cardboard cutout and she talked about how a meme can be considered as a cardboard cutout. Everybody can print a cardboard cutout and put it in the room. But every room that it is used in kind of changes the meaning of the meme, right? So like if you have a cardboard cutout of Donald Trump in a very feminist left wing party, they’re going to be have a very Like a different view of what it’s supposed to mean, then at the right wing rally, for example. So, yeah means a very all encompassing, I would say.
Zenna:
And the interpretation of them changes with the context.
Max:
Definitely.
Zenna:
So you started a bit of a journey. We had a conversation days ago, and you described it almost like a detective journey. Do you? Do you want to share your journey?
Max:
I can. I mean, I’m on this journey still and still, but I’m always on kind of. And right now, as I’m trying to understand all of this, this project, this prospect, especially thinking about also people behind memes, I’ve been starting to get into contact with a lot of people and going through leads, and it’s almost like, depending on who I talk to, you get different intros into topic of memetic disinformation. One of the most interesting one or the most well studied one This 2016 presidential elections in the US, and then from there is a lot of different people you can follow different memes you can follow different ideas you can follow. But everything that’s been written is very old. Not very old, but due to the fact how long books take to print and editing, things are two, three years behind what’s actually happening right now. So I’m on the prowl, you could say, to figure out what’s happening now. What’s the practice now who’s doing it? Where the interesting people?
Zenna:
Would you say there are big actors behind memes used for spreading disinformation, so to say?
Max:
There are, I guess there are main actors. It’s a bit early in my research to name any actors. I mean, there is some people that have been studied before. For example, Gabrielle Coleman has been writing about a very prominent person in general in meme culture, or in troll cultures called “weave”, who was before in Anonymous or part of Anonymous, however, you can be in Anonymous, and now he’s linked to All Right, memetics. So he will be one of the he will be maybe one of those key actors you’re talking about, but there’s way, way, way, way, way more, and it’s very limited our understanding of it. And also of course groups are part of that, right? Like, different groupings on Discord. For example, Unicorn Riot. It’s independent journalist group of journalists that revealed a lot of these hidden communities on discord through…
Zenna:
Okay, so for those who don’t know, sorry, what’s Discord?
Max:
Discord is traditionally I think, targeted at gamers and marketed to gamers and its communication platform, I think, I hope I’m not stumbling over my words, because platform is such a big word, but a communication tool where people can meet up and create groups,
Zenna:
And it’s for chat and voice.
Max:
It’s for voice chat. It’s kind of like TeamSpeak. If anybody’s listening that knows about TeamSpeak. And it’s kind of built on that logic of having chat rooms and then also being able to talk to each other through voice.
Zenna:
And so something that you mentioned to me a while back, which was news to me at the time, was that there’s pretty large organizational happenings, organized via Discord. And specifically for the right wing extreme?
Max:
I think both most likely, because they have a very interesting policy of as long as we don’t know it we don’t see it. So as long as these communities are not pointed at, they can exist on the platform, which a lot of platforms actually use that, that logic are used to use that logic as long as nobody’s conservative, nobody’s gonna ban them, mostly also, because of the sheer size of people that platforms have to consider it, right. So a lot of these extremist groupings take to Discord and obviously other communication tools. And this is why it’s so interesting, because it’s always shifting and changing.
Zenna:
And that’s what the group uncovered. The rainbow…
Max:
Unicorn Riot. They discovered different groupings. Yes. Today we’re , because the German word “Undercover” in these groups, many of them taking various forms of how do you say, vetting so before you can join, you have to take the quiz you have to show your allegiance to the right wing ideals you have to send your ID card perhaps you have to so that they are not in trouble of getting ratted out. Right. So they have like a very…
Zenna:
So they have actually strict policies in place in order to stop people
Max:
from intruding. Yeah, so it’s like a ban. The right wing parties are cautious, not the platform owners. They don’t, I don’t know if they don’t care, but there’s it’s the two extremes groupings they don’t want to get found, of course, because then you would destroy their communication.
Zenna:
and scheming.
Okay, so one thing that I found very interesting about memes and that we talked about a bit awhile back, I’m a complete novice when it comes to academically studying memes.
I do quite often scroll through Reddit and without cookies on. And I do that as a way to look at what memes are naturally being brought to the front page by the algorithms. And I mentioned this to you but the whole “Picachu” meme, and how that correlated with the Pikachu movie release.
Max:
Do you my mind kind of explaining that?
Zenna:
Thank you. Well, basically, in November 2018 Suddenly, there was a spike with this surprise Pikachu meme, and I was surprised that it was suddenly such a big thing with this one random picture of Pikachu being surprised. And it’s always fascinating how means and mean formats kickoff, so eventually I heard about the new Pikachu detective movie that was released shortly after. And I realized that there could be a correlation. And so that would indicate that not only are political groupings using it, but also for capitalist motives. As a form of subliminal commercials.
Max:
Yes, definitely. Yes, I believe that. That is, it is a good statement. And I believe that is to be true and to be proven also true that various companies are using memes or the meme format, or the visual format of memes in order to appropriate a capitalistic viewpoint unto what is traditionally a very community created thing. Yeah, I believe that to be true. I could see how that works.
Because memes differ from - there’s like a very important distinction between virals and memes. As a viral is only one single sample like a viral video, for example. So just one community felt that people flocked to this country viral thing, whereas a meme, by definition is always re-appropriated and re-edited while the creation of it perhaps could be seen as something that once had a capitalistic viewpoint on it, like the appropriations of it are very, in a sense personal and it’s very hard to control the way a meme spreads. So that’s why I’m a little bit unsure of that, if that’s possible, because you wouldn’t need to have either a big community or a big network of bots, in order to first get a meme to start off and then get community appropriated.
Zenna:
But with a format, it’s implied within the format already. So no matter the content that’s put above it, it’s still embedded within the form I’m thinking of. Another one that I’ve been reacting to lately that’s been very popular is girls are like, “something something” and then us boys “something, something.” Have you seen that one around? It’s become really, really big. I’m probably paraphrasing it wrong.
Max:
No, it might just be me.
Zenna:
And just implied in that format, there’s also the aspect of gender groupings
that are being
Max:
binary, false binary, perhaps even
Zenna:
yes, and also just the chauvinistic, the “we,” because the we becomes the dominant voice and the narrative there. What would be like an example for like, right wing meming, for example, or left wing meming?
Max:
So the thing is when you look at it; when I’m looking from academic point of view it means the viewpoints you can have on them are limitless, right? You can have a viewpoint that is focused on the visual aesthetics of memes and why they are, why they are interesting, then you have a viewpoint that focuses on the distribution, right? Like things that are redistributed things: like how do they defuse and then you could have a viewpoint that’s very cultural science like, influenced by a very humanistic viewpoint like the one you just had.
I mean, an example of a right wing meme, I don’t think I could give you examples but like just I don’t think it exists as like, “this is what we need to have a rightwing meme.” The interesting thing or the difficult thing, or also scary thing, is that the appropriate the form of that already exists and subliminally create messaging in these formats that are perhaps, like you just mentioned, have either chauvinistic viewpoint or inherently anti or racial viewpoints. And the interesting thing is that these memes then are through the way that these groups are organizing both on the left and the right but little bit better on the on the right, I had some friends told me that right people just meme better. They’re better organized in that way.
Zenna:
Oh, that’s so funny. I know people who would say the exact opposite. (Laughs.)
Max:
It’s interesting, maybe you should connect me to the other people that that through the way
Zenna:
It’s a subreddit called right wingers can’t meme.
Max:
Great. Through that way they are kind of playing a rhythm, right? Like if you create this new meme that is has like the already successful format that is proven to be successful. And then you have a bunch of people uploading it at the same time, these messages just kind of get thrown into the discourse.
Zenna:
So you mentioned something there that I think is interesting to also happen to further. That’s the concept that in order to make a meme go viral, if you post it at a certain time, and you have a certain amount of people uploading it within the first few minutes, it’s almost ensured that the meme will rise and gain traction, so to speak. So in a sense, that also could make it pretty cheap almost to buy the traction of memes. And thus, the establishment of certain cultures. The train of thought, right now is, if it’s easy to buy cultures, and they’re actively are groups that organize around producing means to create subliminal messages, how can people have real culture nowadays? How can there be real internet culture and what spaces would those be?
Max:
I agree with you to two large extent with the question, but then you kind of take a turn and then it’s a very real and wrong. I don’t I don’t know if there’s a dualism that I would say having everything that is digital is real. Everything is online culture. In online culture you’re saying that, as soon as they’re appropriated by businesses is not any more real culture?
Zenna:
I’m saying it’s seemingly created by community, out of genuine…
Max:
Oh you’d want to know where the border is kind of…
Zenna:
Yeah, if the spaces that are popular for distributing memes nowadays, are easily bought up without it, especially probably nine gags (?), or whatever else. Where are the spaces that are genuine meme producers?
Max:
Okay, it’s a question I don’t work with on a daily, but just from thinking about it.
Zenna:
Do you think it’s something that should exist?
Max:
I feel like it sounds a little bit relativistic (?) in that way. Like these are genuine memes, and these aren’t? Who is that to judge. And in the end, you are the judge of that. So you will find the places that make the genuine memes for you, right. I mean, traditionally, most, I think there’s actually studies of dissemination from of memes. And most of them start on 4chan, and 8chan, which are still sporting a very, very, very basic structure of online organization. So they don’t have any algorithm mix, or uploads or likes or any metrics that go hand in hand with the page. So there will be maybe a place where you find genuine content if you want, that isn’t metrified and bought up.
Zenna:
That’s an interesting one, because I’ve been reading about – well, it ties back a little bit to what you talked about before. About the meme persona you mentioned who had a background of “belonging.” (Insert quotation marks for those who can’t see) belonging to Anonymous and establishing a large culture also based from 4chan, because Anonymous and 4chan are tied together.
The groups on Discord. Are they tied into 4chan as well? Or 8chan?
Max:
That’s a good question. I don’t know. I don’t know. Yeah. To a certain extent there’s some groupings that some people that have been, especially in the in the realm of investigative journalists and infiltration researchers that have taken up certain communities, especially in Germany that has been is called the “conquest RK Monica” (?) was a big hit piece on people that were kind of linking real people to the Discord personas. But to which extent they’re connected to 4chan, I cannot tell you right now, I don’t know. I wouldn’t know. It’s an interesting question, because I feel like there’s a different intention behind that, right? Like, we kind of quick to throw together a lot of people as the same like into the same wording and slum and box. Whereas I believe that, especially people that are targeting memetic warfare are more into playing with the algorithms and trying to get their memes up to the top. Whereas, perhaps some other people are just trolling or putting memes up because they’re there for the community aspect of it. And I guess there’s some people that are overlapping. Yeah. But I feel like in general, when it comes to creating successful memes, and when you want to rate them on a metric scale, then they are targeting bigger platforms, or mainstream platform.
Zenna:
So speaking of boxing’s to go into a box, that’s not the 4chan right wing box, there has been the case of GovZero in Taiwan. And I heard that the process that they had been working on, that they’ve been making stickers to use on the phones. So because all people in Taiwan send a lot of stickers on the phones and then they would be placing subtle messages inside the stickers on the phones, to demonstrate a certain political view, this whole process stems out of this longer political process of basically forking the government of Taiwan. So they will take the government’s web pages create a very similar one or similar URL and domain name, and then copy paste the website but change the content.
Max:
What I think you might be getting at, let me say differently. In that case, I think if you want to compare it to memes was one other question you were looking at maybe in the case of the GovZero and Taiwan, I think it is, in that case different because the message in the stickers is hidden and is it is for a very certain audience to be to be found. Whereas in memetics, I think the interesting or the other scary part about it is that the message is intentionally mainstream. Like, everybody is supposed to be able to uncover the message and it gets blurted out.
Zenna:
But it is subliminal.
Max:
It is subliminal, yes.
Zenna:
What was the correlation between those two, between subliminal and a mainstream message?
Max:
Subliminal in a sense that it is supposed to steer discourse without you necessarily knowing, whereas in GovZero stickers are used to…you have to already be in the in-group in order to understand them, right? Like you won’t just see the sticker and have a message in there. The sticker itself is message-less, right?
Zenna:
I’ve never actually seen that myself.
Max:
Okay, maybe we shouldn’t talk about it because I didn’t know anything about it either.
I was just thinking about when you say like hiding it in stickers. Yeah, maybe we should talk about it. I’ll look into it. It sounds interesting.
Zenna:
We’ll go back to her comfortable corners of 4chan. You know, I started out there . Yeah. You too probably. You can see it? Is it on my face?
Max:
know I could I could see it in terms of, I can see you there.
Zenna:
I’ll take that as a dis! Ok it’s a compliment.
Max:
It’s a loving nudge.
Zenna:
All right. So I feel like there’s so much more we could be talking about.
Max:
Yeah, we can talk about it again.
Zenna:
Yes, some other time. Thank you so much for joining.
Max:
Thank you so much for having me.