[HN Gopher] Memetics - A Growth Industry in US Military Operatio...
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Memetics - A Growth Industry in US Military Operations (2006) [pdf]
Author : lawrenceyan
Score : 59 points
Date : 2025-05-18 01:26 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apps.dtic.mil)
(TXT) w3m dump (apps.dtic.mil)
| globalnode wrote:
| lol, if it wasn't so dangerous I'd find this hilarious.
| ta988 wrote:
| There is no antimemetics division.
| riffraff wrote:
| New book coming out soon, for those unaware
| dmazin wrote:
| Ooh, thanks for saying this! I'll look out for it.
|
| Their collection "humans in transit" is real good.
| riffraff wrote:
| It's a rework of the old SCP story, I asked him what
| changed and he said "too much to mention".
|
| I read the original online so I'm looking forward to pay
| for a book just to give back. Agreed on hist short stories
| too!
| tandr wrote:
| https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub
| shantara wrote:
| The U.S. Army was secretly developing antimemetic weaponry as
| early as the 1940s.
| JoeCortopassi wrote:
| I read this book because I misunderstood a recommendation and
| thought it was a business book talking about how companies get
| people to forget negative information (e.g. dump news on Friday
| etc). Boy was that first chapter a wild ride until I figured
| out it was not in fact a business book
|
| Fun story, strong recommend
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if there's an SCP that's about
| businesses using antimemetic anomalies to bury bad news.
| Hell, there's an SCP about a bank that makes deals with
| devils at _industrial scale_.
| findalex wrote:
| _...must function unfastened from current PsyOps doctrine which
| prohibits communicating any PsyOps type message or meme to US
| domestic audiences._
|
| _PsyOps doctrine_ is an interesting way of saying "the law"...
| at least until NDAA 2012: https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-
| congress/house-bill/5736.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250518031649/https://apps.dtic...
| endoblast wrote:
| >Managing, employing and leveraging memetic power
|
| This is propaganda, or advertising, not memeing. Propaganda is
| used to promote specific ideologies; memes arise spontaneously to
| counter them. Since _all_ ideologies /-isms are by nature wrong,
| memes are generally-speaking a good thing. They're on the side of
| reality. They use rhetoric and fiction to point to the truth,
| often via some form of _reductio ad absurdum_. By contrast
| mainstream propaganda uses facts selectively in order to distort
| the big picture, mislead or simply distract people.
| OmarShehata wrote:
| memes are not "on the side of reality". memes are on the side
| of whatever resonates. What resonates is what aligns to _your
| model of reality_ (which is shaped by the ideology you 're
| inside).
|
| There's no clear distinction between propaganda, advertising,
| and what you call "meme-ing". Companies can and do create
| campaigns that look organic, that do takeoff as people feel
| they are organic (and then they become actually real as people
| take them further than what the company is pushing)
|
| For example: Barbenheimer was a meme that got people to watch
| two movies in one weekend (not a typical behavior for most
| people). Was that an organic meme, or a marketing campaign?
|
| (If anyone is curious, I keep trying to write a good intro to
| this rabbithole, see my writeup on the New York Times
| explaining how a psyop works, which itself very significant for
| them to be spelling it out like this:
| https://defenderofthebasic.substack.com/p/new-york-times-is-...
| )
| endoblast wrote:
| Not everyone is an ideologue. Some people are just on the
| side of what _is_ , or what is real.
| mecsred wrote:
| Everyone is an ideologue. What _is_ is too complicated to
| fit in a human brain, so we compress it. Thinking you're a
| free thinker is a type of ideology you can subscribe to.
| K0balt wrote:
| I think maybe you underestimate memes. A meme is a self copying
| idea that propagates through "sentient" creatures, which can
| also include many animals. (Animals can become fearful of
| arbitrary non-threats through social transmission , for
| example, and populations of animals can develop cultural
| behaviors that persist generations after the stimulus for the
| behavior is removed)
|
| Memes are most powerful when they are packaged in complex
| structures, such as ideologies, cultures, or religion.
|
| Memetic structures can contain formal mechanisms of
| transmission, proof of infection / identification of in a out
| group, immune systems against memetic disease (disease from the
| perspective of the memetic system, not the organism), and even
| apoptositic isolation mechanisms to prevent out of control
| mutations. These memetic systems of ideas and ideology are
| subject to rapid iteration and natural selection, and ones that
| survive in the wild for significant periods become pseudo
| legitimized as primary cultural paradigms.
|
| Memes are by far the most dynamic and influential factor in
| human evolution and development, and have been for quite some
| time. All wars are primarily memetic.
| endoblast wrote:
| Yes however I was not referring to memes in the broadest
| sense but memes as humorous (usually) images with captions,
| shared online. Unlike propaganda and advertising these are
| spontaneously created by unpaid individuals (though Omar is
| right there is a certain amount of overlap as always with
| general categories).
|
| What puts them 'on the side of reality' is that humour,
| rather like beauty, has deep connections with truth. It
| doesn't work otherwise. It's one of the ways we update our
| model of reality...
| K0balt wrote:
| Yeah, humor is a potent antitoxin.
| webdoodle wrote:
| The best meme's are also spontaneously created, not
| produced.
| webdoodle wrote:
| One of my last posts on Reddit before my account was suspended
| and all my 15 years of posts, comments and private messages were
| deleted without my approval, was about memetic chaining. I've
| reposted it on Substack for those interested:
|
| https://webdoodle.substack.com/p/memetic-chaining-and-the-ne...
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