Afraid to Dive

Memes are an integral part of our modern society. It is not only one of the most powerful industries, but also an important cultural tool. To understand people's interaction with memes, read the ' Meme Theory ' article first. We live in a world of dramatically developing technologies, where the flow of information is increasing with each year, and the terabytes of data constantly circulating around us. On the other hand, digital technologies appeared not so long ago: about twenty or thirty years ago people had no idea about it. If the Internet has evolved to such an extent in such a short amount of time, a logical question arises: in what conditions will we and our descendants live? There is a great chance that in the age of the Meme Singularity. The Meme Singularity is a hypothetical moment in which the life of memes will be extremely difficult to track. New memes will appear every hour, or even minute. This will finally erase all the boundaries between normies and me...

Since most memes follow the same scenario of development, consisting of few certain steps, the unified theory was created in order to explain their behavior and analyze current trends in the meme evolution. The theory consists of three main theses : Internet memes, including postmemes, continuously develop, acquire new cultural forms and gradually become more complicated. Theoretical complication of memes, coupled with the development of AI will lead to the Meme Singularity . An average meme has 3 "lives", and a total of 5 stages of existence. However, this doesn't apply to all the memes. Meme food chain consists of 3 links (memers, normies and "tankers"). Each link has its own role: producing, consuming, or exploiting memes. There are no shameful links, and almost every role is important. The system w orks at the expense of the "tops" and "bottoms". Importance of "tankers" is controversial, since the system can function with...

It is no secret that the Internet, like everything in our life, is developing and gradually becoming more complicated. Along with the global web, memes are also developing, acquiring more complex forms and touching on high topics such as politics, philosophy and art. In recent years they have suddenly grown wiser, memes such as Political Compass, Increasingly Verbose Memes and absurdist memes. It is important to understand that the original purpose of internet memes has never existed at all: those were just ideas floating from one computer to another. As spreading, people endowed them with a goal, and, in the end, it has become a kind of web humor, unique and extremely unusual. In real life, oddly enough, religion is a good example of meme development. Rituals, beliefs, myths, tales: all this under the influence of cultural evolution mixed up and formed into a united system of values, a memeplex. This was mentioned by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book 'The Selfish Gene'. Cult...