Defining a meme “as an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme” is about as anti-meme as it gets. A forgetful definition that everyone stopped reading about halfway through.
Simply put, memes take what are often complex and wide-ranging ideas and bring them into singular Focus. They are a crystallized thought.
A portable bit of Truth easily shared and digested among globally-connected people. In a time-starved world drowning in a sea of confused information and expansive social media, memes represent a bit of sanity. Memes may even take on the form of an unspoken truth. They are a language unto itself with no boundaries and no limits. With memes, less is more. The simpler the better.
Memes can take many forms. A video. An image. A phrase. A single word. A good meme will make you laugh. A great meme will change your mind. Which is why Memes are also a weapon. Probably the most powerful weapon we have in a world moving toward technological and financial tyranny.
In a post-COVID age when nation-states are trampling human rights, memes allow us to fight false narratives and outright lies.
Memes allow us to preserve our humanity and give hope for a better future.
Lockdown problems in Australia, Canada and China are now my problem in America. Currency collapses in Venezuela, Lebanon and Turkey are everyone’s problem. This is no longer a world where we can simply go about our local lives and pretend other countries' problems are not our own and will not affect us. Memes are the common language that will spread truth and information instantaneously around a multilingual world.
In the Bitcoin community, our common refrain is “Fix the money, fix the world”.
We are the group that identified that the majority of the ills of this world are directly tied to the control and manipulation of money. Unfortunately, the majority of people are either too busy to care or too disheartened to fight. They know a problem exists, but can’t identify the source of the angst in their life. Memes are how we open their eyes. Memes are what takes this common idea of what is wrong in the world and shows people they are not alone and that there is a solution. This fight involves us all.
Every day, more people are awakened to the reality of how their lives are controlled. Memes are quickly growing into a vast network to lead this fight to take back control. Memes are how we connect people, regardless of their culture and language. Memes are now the global common culture/language. It is important to remember that memes not only identify problems, they offer solutions. Memes show us the sordid world as it is, but also show us a world that can come to be. Much like Bitcoin, memes are many things to many people. Memes are funny. Memes are educational. Memes are thought-provoking. Memes are weapons.
But most of all Memes are Hope.
