Of Memes and Magisteriums

To meme, or not to meme? That is the question.

Memes are a fascinating form of communication, because they combine pictures and text. That’s the most basic level, and it’s been done before throughout history of course. But what’s different with memes is the element of humor, and how they’re tied to the emergent layer of internet culture that’s developed over the last couple of decades.

Memes became mainstream around 10 to 15 years ago, though they’ve existed much longer. In the beginning, they were mostly dumb, lowbrow jokes—things like advice animals and other simple formats. Over time, memes have branched into so many areas. For instance, in my corner of Twitter, there are tons of spiritual memes. In some cases, it’s even hard to tell what’s a meme and what’s more like a motivational image or poster. For me, the big dividing line between the two is humor, but opinions differ.

Memes spread ideas extremely quickly, and they reflect a dramatically different information landscape than we had for most of human history. Historically, the majority of people—like 95% or more—had no access to new ideas. They grew up within a specific religious or cultural framework, and that was it. Now, the environment is completely different, with ideas competing for mindshare. A great example is the cryptocurrency space.

You see direct competition between different memecoins, where a lot of their success depends on the quality of the memes surrounding them. If the image the coin is based on is funny or compelling, it can significantly boost its value. Similarly, if the meme carries some deeper meaning, it can attract more interest than a random image, even if that image is compelling.

From there a lot of the success around a memecoin comes from the community. How many people are in your Telegram chat? How many folks on twitter are using your memecoin as their profile picture? How many folks are sharing and retweeting it?

Admittedly, a lot of these metrics are gamed behind the scenes. Thousands of "crypto influencers" exist who basically run botnetworks to boost your posts and memes, which makes sense given how much money is in the space, and how unregulated it is. And then you have market dynamics, herd mentality, and inertia kicking in. That being said, the original quality of the meme still does have a lot to do with the success.

Moving Forward with Memes

I’m convinced memes are going to become an increasingly legitimized way to coordinate ideas and ideologies on a large scale. We’ve already seen this happen in politics, like with the Trump campaign and other recent political movements. I don’t think this trend is stopping anytime soon.

I’m not entirely sure if that’s a good thing, though. Memes are inherently irreverent and often undermine authority. While challenging authority is very characteristic of our time, I still believe authority matters. We must have rules in order to help us grow within a safe framework, and ironically memeing everything tends to make those frameworks very difficult to coordinate on. Unfortunately, the horse has left the barn on that one, and it’s going to be tough to rein back in.

One of the craziest innovations with memes is AI involvement. Now, there are AI agents creating memes, and sometimes they are the memes. In crypto, for instance, the next big thing is likely AI-driven meme generation. If we figure out how to use reinforcement learning—like basing rewards for the AI on likes, shares, or replies on platforms like Twitter—AI could get extremely good at making viral, compelling memes. Add large flows of capital into the mix, and you could see a system where the best-performing meme-making AI gets funding to upgrade itself, leading to an upward spiral of effectiveness.

For instance, just look at the popular coin MemesAI, with a 50mil market cap:

And this AI is frankly quite low quality in my opinion - soon we will have AI that makes far better memes. Not a good thing for AI safety folks! But hey, they seem to have mostly lost already anyway.

For anyone paying attention to the future, understanding memes and how they work is becoming crucial. A major reason why the current elite and political class often look incompetent is that they ignore meme culture or dismiss it as irrelevant. But memes are becoming a primary way for people to share information, learn, and even orient themselves in life. So, even if you hate memes or think they’re lame, my advice is to study them—and maybe even learn how to make them.

If you can’t beat them, join them.