Eggyhead

They’re all about saying as little as possible using a slightly altered version of a scripted scene.

More like using as few words as possible while relying on the scene for the context.

If I tell you:

I get off the computer, go to bed, then look at my phone.

It sounds pretty normal. Am I happy? Sad? Apathetic? Communicating without expressions or gestures often leads to misunderstanding. Have you ever got into an argument with someone online because they misunderstood the intent of something you said? Maybe you forgot your sarcasm marker? Well, if I had opted to send you instead, I would have also told you that I more or less feel disgusted about myself without actually adding any more words, or even typing anything at all because it’s already in the image.

Now I won’t agree or disagree either way whether it’s a cancer, I don’t really care. It’s just another way I observe people communicating. I’ve heard people tell me the way African Americans speak is "destroying the language.” It’s not. It’s just a dialect that manifested where a void was left to be filled. Memes do something the regular alphabet does not.

Unrelated, but look at gen alpha slang. Kids too young to know correct English learn their words through games and memes, often outside of direct parental supervision. So if they need to express something more abstract, they do so using words that seem close enough and sound nice, referencing ideas that others in their circle can quickly and easily comprehend. Suddenly some popular tiktokker uses it and then that word is codified in the vernacular. Most of it will fade away as they get older, but some of it might stick around and get absorbed into the greater language.

If I show you what is message do you receive?

I just see memes as an extension of language. When we read English, we can sound out the words if we want, but we really just recognize the words as a whole and understand their meaning. Kind of like a kanji or a glyph. I think of memes as really powerful evolutions of this. People can communicate really complicated or nuanced emotions very simply and clearly with a meme. It’s like a kanji using actual art and imagery rather than strokes. Not saying we’ll be communicating strictly through memes or anything, just that it’s a way we are communicating, and you can’t really control the way people talk.

I don’t like this rebranding to “open social web” like it was made for them.