When its time to retire a meme. When a phase is true, we use it a lot. Eventually, the more linguistically clever of us perfectly encapsulate a concept in a short phrase that then spreads wildly. This is what Richard Dawkins termed a meme. (actually, he was talking about something else, but lets keep this as short as possible). When a meme becomes so well used it becomes a cliche. Writers hate cliches, with good reason, but there is nothing independent of lack of creativity wrong with them. They wouldnt remain cliche long if they werent fundamentally true. So, cliches are good. However, after a while, the original meaning begins to shake off and you wind up with the original meme just freestanding - a cliche that exists only for its own sake. When that happens it becomes dangerous, something that means NOTHING, but still has the street cred of an actual meme. That is when we need to consciously stomp it out of existence with extreme prejudice. What brought these thoughts on is something I saw in my newsfeed today. We all use the meme Big Blank. I know I do. Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Government, etc. We all know what it means, guys in suits working surreptitiously for their own interest with no care, or even contempt for YOUR interest. It went though the natural meme stage, then into the cliche stage and now its become just a meaningless scare phrase. Today there was a company in the internet trying to sell me razorblades. Fine. They make a lot of good points, and ones Ive thought for a long time (things like, if you have have double, triple or even quadrupedal bladed razor, you are still just cutting with one razor and the others are just along for the ride, and that they sell you a handle then the blades come in replaceable heads, and every few years they change nothing on the heads themselves, but the way they attach to the handles, forcing you to shell out for a new handle, etc.) Its all true, but here was the selling line: Free yourself from the Tyranny of Big Razor. Ok, I dont like Gillette and P&Gs tricks, but they dont rise to the stature of Big Blank. They dont even come close. At most, they rook me out of ten bucks a year. That is a shameless miss use of what was once a good and meaningful meme. And when that happens, its time for that meme to die. I wont use it any more. I recommend nobody does. We have to go back to spelling it out in wordy fashion till the corrupted meme dies.
Posted on: Mon, 19 May 2014 18:39:01 +0000
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