Social Media, Memes, Censorship & Interference

I'm not a very talented meme maker, but it's a fact that the best military intelligence recognises the power of memes, and I made the mistake of referring to that authority, and so the Memetic Warfare post above was denuded of the images I posted.

Out of all the memes I've written over the last 9 years, only a handful have been passed around enough times, that I've been inadvertently sent my own work.

Usually this is by a well-meaning connection of mine, hoping to red-pill me, which is always a good chuckle.

From time to time, I've also seen my memes passed around social media and that's rewarding when it happens. Usually they've been copied, butchered, nicked, repurposed and sometimes revitalised in exactly the way Richard Dawkins intended, when he mutated the word 'gene' to explain that instead of mutation by random change, and spreading by a form of Darwinian selection, they are altered deliberately by human creativity as memes.

Social media is no longer so effective, so I  don't mind getting blocked on Facebook. the latest 3 month ban has given me a chance to really look into different platforms, but it's still a great address book. 

Losing my twitter account in 2014 was a quite a loss, but it's still the best research tool despite the censorship, and I get to do a lot more of that lately, which is why I'm reasonably upbeat and confident about the future, although there's a lot of work to go and we can't drop our guard.

As I've mentioned, it does surprise me when individual posts on this blog are censored or tampered with. I posted a bunch of my hottest memes in a post from October 2018, and they were removed with a kind of image placeholder left behind as shown above, in case this link is not inviting enough to verify for yourself.

The most annoying interference is when an important post is tampered with, so that there are spelling, grammar or punctuation mistakes. Don't get me wrong, I do make regular mistakes, but they're always the same, such as repetitive use of a word in a paragraph and a few other idiosyncrasies of mine.

Around once a month or so, I'll reread a notable post of mine, and find the kind of errors that are not typical for me at all. They always undermine an important posts' credibility. It's been going on for years and it never happens if I'm just sharing something for shits and giggles.

Which is sometimes the case.

UPDATE - As if the universe is trying to help me, I just came across one of my TV memes being shared on Twitter, just now.

Regrettably the machine is censoring emails to my father, with links to my blog.

Update: Another of my memes spotted on June 1st 2022

Stealing the Memes of Production

Herbert Marcuse - The Frankfurt School

It's fashionable now within the alt-research community AKA information terrorists, to lay the blame of contemporary moral bankruptcy at the door of the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism. There's clearly some basis in this argument and indeed, many contemporary intellectuals and (qu)ackademics are determined to push forward a minorities agenda that is all about furthering one minority while undermining both the majority, and in the long run, the collective of under represented minorities they exploit such as LGBTI, feminist and ethnic groups.

The flaw in the argument against the Frankfurt school is they established themselves in pre-war Nazi Germany which is about the worst place in the world to launch a critical theory movement that fought for minority rights. There's no escaping that given the winners of WWII had yet to be determined there's little chance anybody could have logically planned the Frankfurt School's flight to, and success in, late 60's USA.

I could also offer a counter claim. The idea that a Berkeley professor who subsequently argued against the (winners of WWII) military industrial complex and planned obsolescence in consumer culture couldn't be removed from his academic post is just silly given any professor today knows full well not to question basic fairy tales such as 9/11. 

Marcuse received a ton of hate mail and death threats for his views.

I like Marcuse. 

His words are grounded in logic and good intent. Naturally, any belief system can be weaponised, as indeed it was in 60's' USA, but it's clear that Marcuse was just the decent side of the Ronnie Reagan vs Scruffy Hippy dialectic that was completely stage managed in order to reap the dividends of a cultural war that distracted from the rape of Vietnam and much much more.

There are more key individuals I need to study from the Frankfurt Group in order to determine a rounded opinion, but from this early start I'm already modifying my early snap judgement on the Frankfurt school to something more nuanced, complex and as ever, more interesting.

Thomas Sankara

An extraordinary story of Thomas Sankara, one of Burkina Faso's and Africa's unsung heroes. He wasn't without his idealist mistakes but still a great person to be admired.

Bernard-Henri Lévy - Grotesque Peacock

A while back, I was getting into Slavoj Zizek and I watched this debate called Violence & The Left In Dark Times, held between Zizek and Bernhard-Henri Levy at the The New York Public Library with host Paul Holdengräber.  I was repulsed by what I heard and infuriated with what I saw; I wrote the following in the comments:

"I'm reluctant to say this as a generalism but the French are insufferable here. The host/MC is a sycophant of the highest order. If manners are about direct eye engagement then Bernard is a philistine of courtesy being fellated by a pygmy of enlightenment".

You can imagine how delighted I was just now to learn, that quite by chance the other moral spirit-level of the times (with respect to who I find inspirational), Tariq Ali has now pursued Bernhard Henri-Levy for a mock trial just recently on January 28, along with activists belonging to the PIR (Parti des Indigènes de la République). Both Norman Finkelstein and Tariq Ali were the only non-French who gave evidence against Levy.

It's a good feeling to see my sentiments echoed from those first few hours I watched BHL in action defending the indefensible with dripping arrogance.

Tariq writes: "I’ve always regarded BHL as a comic figure. On the two occasions — in Berlin and New York– that I’ve shared a platform to debate him he reminded me of a puffed up peacock in heat (hence, I thought, the permanently unbuttoned shirt).

You can read more of that over at Tariq's blog as this now leaves me to pursue the other buffoon in the shape of Paul Holdengräber who portrays Zizek as taking up too much time in the debate. A point I aim to make sure is vindicated as untrue. It's evident he gives too much of the floor to Levy in the video below in pursuit of sycophancy. See for yourself because the next time I watch it, the stopwatch is out and Paul Holdengräber will be acquainted with the facts. Any New York friends go to the public library?

Careless Lisper

Slavoj Žižek had me raising my hand in objection by the first minute over a throwaway comment of reality as abstraction but he quickly settles down to unfurl a devastating rapid response to a series of embarrassingly superficial market capitalists who are increasingly beginning to exude the air of polyester flare-wearing, Boomer swingers. Wealthy but morally bankrupt. Rich but fucking clueless. Wedged up but drenched in Hai-Karate aftershave. The epitome of dangerous anachronisms. Naturally they're the last to realise it in much the same way that Louis XIV was puzzled when the peasants arrived at Versailles and proved themselves to be natural vivisectionists in response to the brutality that small groups of greedy people invariably inculcate through financial and most importantly historical myopia.

I loved watching this and I now have a bit of a man-crush on the Slovenian dissident who I recently struggled with his Lacanian analysis in A perverts guide to cinema. Žižek also tackles some more concrete issues in this so hang in there for some honest critique of why the left are very hypocritical on Afghanistan and so forth. There's a certain amount of professional jealousy from here, as unlike me he got to bone Miss Brazil as the Elvis of cultural theory. 

It's not right, but it's OK. 

Qik - Part II

I left a comment on Robert's blog some months back about QIK because I could not access it in China without the aid of a proxy server and also because I couldn't get a QIK invite, which I thought was something to do with being in China. QIK got in touch with me and gave me an Alpha Tester or something, and I was off and away with live to the internet streaming from a Nokia N95. When I showed it to Nokia in China they were blown away as I demoed it in their offices but as usual with the future, too many clients are buckling under the present to be truly inspirational.

Anyhow an immediate thought was how controversial this could be if I was in the wrong place at the wrong time or the right place at the right time depending on the context (everything is after all contextual) and I think the recent spotlight in China has highlighted that.

I had a low key QIK incident of my own when making my way to the Forbidden City. I saw a crowd gathering around the kind of vehicle that only the very rich and powerful can afford to own, as ostentatious luxury cars in Beijing are frowned upon more so than Shanghai. The police were on the scene already, and I took a glance as I walked by only to see a young Caucasian male stuck in a crowd of 20 something Chinese who were looking on intently.

I thought he seemed like he needed some help and made my way over to offer a hand. He had a cut finger, the car was scratched and he explained to me that it had knocked him off his bike. I could see that the police were at a loss for what to do because they didn't speak English and both the boy wanted to get on his way and the car owner was eager to accept the cost of a spray job and avoid bureaucracy escalation. I called our brilliant HR Manager Grace who is way more of a planner than most planners in China, to see if we could get the cops to put the pad away and save everybody a few hours. But you know how it is with those who are used to orders. Once the pad is out its not worth their job to put it away and also the Olympics mean that they are very binary about sticking to the rules. Once I'd done all I could I thought I'd whip the N95 out and do a QIK scene which was beamed straight to the web. Those of you who follow my Tweets are immediately alerted to the live streaming nature of QIK (Althought China is still waiting to go full-on 3G)

Here it is:

And without further ado here's a cut and paste from Johnnie Moore who should take you to the next level of why I am inspired by the tools that are created by the people and for the people. Way more so than Marx had in mind when pushing for the workers to acquire the means of production and why I don't have a problem calling it Socialist Media

If you get excited about where social media might take us all, you'll probably enjoy this post by Grumblemouse: San Fran torch relay is a social media extravaganza. The notion of a guy helping to organise a protest in San Francisco by watching a livestream of NBC and sending updates via Twitter, from his kitchen in London, is pretty cool, I think.

I think today is going to be the social media event of the year as I hear that the Rick Roll flash mob thing is happening in London and you can watch it live from Jamie's phone too if you can't make there. Rumour has it that a brand is involved and I'm wondering if Nokia were paying attention to the presentation Rob and I wrote back in London. We'll see later today.

Marxist Libertarian

No surprises on the political compass test for me then. I don't really believe in perma-ideology given that nothing lasts for ever, but broadly speaking I'm going to be hanging out with Gandhi and the other libertarian socialists in the bottom left. This is quite a fun little data visualisation and perceptual mapping exercise.

Incidentally I've been trying to persuade advertising agencies to do 3D perceptual brand mapping for years. Sadly not one of the them has had the perspicacity to make a flash designer and excel spreadsheet whizz kid available. So I might as well blog about it instead.