The Meme Singularity

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 memers. In other words, all the land will go under the water, forming a single ‘Meme Ocean’.



Two Factors
AI and ANNs
As with the Technological Singularity, the main role here is played by artificial intelligence. Nowadays we face it almost every day, but in the future artificial intelligence and neural networks will occupy all spheres of life, including the Internet. Since their computing processes are many times greater than of humans, they can easily predict trends and determine the popularity of a meme with the help of complex algorithms. Paradoxically, AI will understand human psychology better than man himself. In addition to its accurate analysis, neural networks will generate a lot of content. At the moment, bots already know how to use templates and create pictures (for example, ShitpostBot 5000), but judging by the frightening pace of their development, someday we will see high-quality memes made fully by machine. Fortunately, this will not happen soon; in the foreseeable future a robot will not be able to master art, and memes themselves can be considered as a kind of art. Embedding an idea and feelings into the concrete work requires these very feelings and highly developed abstract intelligence, so without it all AI's attempts will look like an imitation of art. The level of some Dank and Surreal Memes is surely not possible to be reached, but the question is whether the human himself will be able to differentiate real art from its imitation. When a machine creates a full-fledged popular meme, the masses will be chanting about "the end of the human era of memes," but the worst is yet to come.

Internet Access and Speed
It is no secret that the Internet is becoming more and more popular every year, attracting many new users. The connection speed is growing as well as the accessibility of the Internet itself. A turning point will come when the Internet becomes part of everyday life. Technologies such as Mixed Reality will contribute to this. The most unbelievable forecast is that the global web will cover the entire planet, having us inextricably linked with it from the cradle to the grave. Some of our descendants might spend their lives online and absorb tons of information every day, not being able to escape from it in the real world, because the Internet WILL be their real world.

The War
The preconditions for the Meme Singularity were back in October 2016 during the Great Meme War of r/me_irl. As is known, any war gives rise to a lot of creativity, and especially the 'meme wars' are creativity-based. At that time, almost every day, new memes were born, though being the tools of the users trying to conquer the subreddit. Most likely, when artificial intelligence will fully entrench on the Internet, many people will begin to protest and unleash a new meme war. If they are dealing with a neural network that learns on the go, the chances of winning are extremely low. Perhaps, this hypothetical war will strengthen an AI which will serve as an impetus to the Singularity.
On the other hand, the Singularity can come faster if another neural network will be involved in the war, and they both would make each other evolve faster and faster.

The Singularity and Its Aftermath
When people will retreat, finally losing control of the situation, AI will evolve to the degree of community. Realizing that feeding content to their creators is not really funny, they will exchange memes with each other, create their own portals and arrange meme wars. In other words, they will become ultimate shitpostbots. If we don't learn how to control them and go too far, the history of our web culture can quickly come to an end. Also don't forget that there is the Technological Singularity not so far away.

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