commit 560595b1835cc5f70da20a4dac29cc454bb0ceda
parent 96ddf314d128b0f48a554f1191d7632c7c38f198
Author: ugrnm <ultrageranium@bleu255.com>
Date: Thu Jan 30 16:45:22 +0100
thesis 1 final draft
Diffstat:1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)
diff --git a/transmediale-2020-7-theses/index.html b/transmediale-2020-7-theses/index.html
@@ -95,26 +95,23 @@ blablabla
## Fediverse as transition from meme wars to network wars?
-TM needs a talk about memes
-what else can be added to dicussion
+What would be a conference on art and digital culture without a good old discussion about internet memes?
-Social media platforms have taken the democratisation of meme production and their circulation to a scale unseen before.
+Social media platforms have allowed the democratisation of meme production and have greatly facilitated their circulation.
-They achieved this by creating a situation that favours the circulation of memetic material to keep their users hooked, and if you do that for more than a decade, thanks to the wonder of software mediation, obsession with metrics, and competition, you end up with everything having to be a meme to have any chance at being naticeable in these environments.
+They achieved this by creating software that favours the circulation of viral content to keep their users hooked.
-But there's something that was completely unforseen, and that was how memes became more than either strategically engineered vessels to plant ideas, more than wishful tools of political manipulation, or isolated funny viral things to share with friends you don't know.
+And if you do that for more than a decade, you end up with everything having to be a meme to have any chance at being naticeable in social media.
-Instead they became a language, a slang, a collection of signs and symbols through which cultural and subcultural identity could materialise. The circulation of these in turn have strengthened various political discourses.
-
-This is a growing concern for social media platforms, well actually it's a bit of a panic, because the situation has gone completely out of control.
-
-???
-
-Social media platforms have became Petri dishes for all sorts of opinions and beliefs circulating out of control, and no amount of AI or precarious traumatised human moderators will help them dismantle or control these communities.
+But there's something that was completely unforseen, and that was how memes became a language through which collective identities could emerge and be stronger,to the point of creating hostile and toxic environments.
+As a result all those that ended up excluded or harmed in these environments have become interested in migrating to platforms that they can control themselves, reversing the narrative of the universal global village, and the tech industry claim of connecting the world without friction.
+In a situation where silencing or voluntary exile are the only options, federation opens a third way. It allows a community to engage with conflicts and exchanges with other communities while remaining undiluted in its scope, ideology and interests.
+But in this situation, we can wonder if this is not going to accentuate thinking along axes of friends or enemies, to the extent that simplistic meme warfare will be replaced with network wars.
+This is why, if we're going to talk about memes today, we must move the discussion to the level of social media infrastructures. We must talk about these environments that allow, for better or worse, the sedimentation of knowledge. What happens when some specific discourse can accumulate and concentrate online and what kind of dynamics it creates.
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