WRITTEN WITH SPEECH TO TEXT FOR ACCOMODATION REASONS
So a lot of my work writing within the field of art history has actually been based on this. Over the last 15 to 20 years there's been conversation about what extent digital exclusive media that doesn't fold itself into a more traditional medium like Netflix produced films, should be discussed and cataloged as the art that it is. I'm not really willing to enter discussion about how much of this is art because I find that redundant. it's art. if you think anything that it was built on to exist is art than you think it's art. Memes are art. memes are part of a legacy of non linguistic communication. While their use contemporaneously is more layered and complex, they are still a part of the legacy of images as communication that began in the Lascaux Caves.
Much of the way we talk about meme as a form of communication is very similar to how people 150 years ago were writing about architecture as a form of communication. A lot of Victor Hugo's reasoning for writing Hunchback of Notre Dame was as a plea to convince people of the importance of this building specifically, but also of architecture in general, as a way of communicating big grand ideas in ways that words would fail to do especially in a time when so much the population was illiterate.
And the way this works with memes is very similar. There is a video by Magdalen Rose on Youtube in which she talks about how different Internet communities have different languages of memes. And I've talked about this before on a essay that I published through Vocal. The point to all of this being that the issue of having anything Internet based including memes and shit posts as a form of cultural artifact is how flimsy our ways of conserving them are.
There's a different Youtuber, I forget his name, but he makes a case in his video about how you should actually be pirating all of your media That in an age where companies are not only able to, but incentivized to completely cut out all works and make them unavailable if not just simply gone forever, that trying to find a way to achieve parity with all of these different digital items is of tantamount importance for the purposes of conservation and cataloging.
So much of Internet memes are consumed through osmosis. you're hearing an echo of them, it's very rare that you actually see the initial version in its true form. But you also pick up on what it means. Every time you see a zoomed in image of that dude smug face and you know it means that there's free real estate.
There are several Tumblr accounts dedicated to preserving posts that are deemed as important. Strange AEons videos act as a great entry into comprehension of the site that would allow for a lot of information especially that which has been lost to be understood. Archive of Our Own and the Internet Archive as well as Wikipedia are all invaluable and essential resources to an age where so much of our art our culture is happening in a non tangible space. I want to be so clear that it's good that NFTS have failed, but the fact they failed how they did and as spectacularly as they did really showcases the concern we should have with how all of this media can be lost. If that shark ever decides he wants another bite out of the fiber cables at the bottom of the ocean, Incalculable amounts of human history will be lost.
All this to say, if I can even be said to have a point with this and the post didn't just trigger me being hyper verbal about one of my favorite topics, Is that yes absolutely kids in the future are going to be studying the Internet posts of today period to some degree it's already happened. The last government class I took in college included a section about the 2016 election and how Trump won off of the back of 4Chan Pepe memes. There are some people within the art community who maybe don't fully feel on board with the Internet even today. But they are few and far between and they are wrong. All of this is important. All of it. And I want you to remember that next time you write a smutty fanfic.
2087
blakekathryn
ellievsbear
areudirty
