Here begins: my toot-serial snap shots of writing my thesis.
#amwriting #thesis
This may be a non-native English thing, but meme, is a word I did not learn until I understood the internet, and as we use memes here.
Which makes it hilarious for me to read about in the literary theory books, as it refers to the original definition:
"an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means."
@maloki words are memes. Don't look at Dennett's new book (from bacteria to Bach and back) unless you want explore a rabbit hole of epic dimensions!
@Tryphon I mean, yes, I'm aware. But coming from Swedish, where "meme" translates into "nedärvt kulturdrag", which means inherited cutural characteristic.
There's a big leap, and a word that was not used to describe it.
I just find it funny. I know what I meme is.
@maloki ok, sorry, I was reacting to the restrictive internet definition
When referencing online articles, I find it disturbing to not have another means of reference than page reference, like maybe paragraph reference. It's not a thing in MLA right now, but maybe it should be?
Or maybe soon thesises will be written in virtual reality programming and we can walk through the argument, and find the source hyperlinked directly to the words on the page.
@maloki how about, putting a new section in the appendix, and title it, "precision references." You can query your references by .json and include in values to pin point paragraph tag.
Or maybe it's an inherent problem with html. It's not like people go out of their way to ID paragraph tags in the HTML, thus MLA never picked up on
This isn't necessarily a musing regarding the process of writing, and researching, but, I have to remind myself that I don't have to be accessible 24/7 for my part time job.
Mind you, a part time job, which is also interlinked with my passtime activity, tooting. My job is always in my face. Maybe I can't see it as part time?
However, until my thesis is done, I do have to limit myself to allocate hours in the right place.
Anyone can do it.
“It’s about demolishing the myth that there has to be a special class of creators, and flattening out the creative curve so we can all contribute to our creative environment,” -
Vaidhyanthan.
http://www.salon.com/2002/08/01/bootlegs/
(why is this relevant to my thesis, because it's about the origins of the word mashup)
@maloki I was listening to a podcast, I think the topic was inequality, but part of it talked about how as we've industrialized and diversified and specialized, we've also adopted the mindset that everything needs to be done at expert-level.
The example used was singing, and how in western culture, regular people sing much less than they used to, partly because of the hierarchical structure of celebrity culture. Doing things as an amateur isn't "good enough" so we don't do it.
@frankiesaxx @maloki One could just as argue there are more avenues for expression and entertainment which lead to the decline in homegrown musicians.
I hear that music example - It's bigger than celebrity alone - Also as a culture we have moved from the dance halls & piano in every home to more & more personalised music - to an earbud, in my own head only experience.
As this has happened, ppl have not realised the social, value, & personal benefit they lost from not participating in making music. It's hard for people to find a way back in w/out guidance, encouragement, or opportunity. I am an advocate.
@frankiesaxx @maloki
@maloki have you seen this? may be useful https://law.duke.edu/musiccomic/
@maloki we don't need future tech for that. Linking to the original source would be easily doable with good ol' HTML alone, yet lots of people don't do it, notably institutions like media/newspaper websites. It's especially jarring when they mention a *URL* and don't make it clickable. Everything to avoid having the reader leave their site. :/
@hisham_hm well, In academic writing I'm pretty sure it's more about that is interned for print, and that's why you don't want clickable links.
@maloki modern PDFs support [2] style references that are also clickable links :)
@maloki I think most native English speakers discovered the word meme through the Internet definition. Before that it was an obscure term coined by Richard Dawkins and never permeated the popular vernacular with it's intended definition. I think any lexicographer worth their salt would list the internet version as the primary definition.
@Sweet_Tango_Chill It also comes from French même if I recall correctly, Even though that means "the same".
Different but the same.
I dunno, language is funny.
@Sweet_Tango_Chill @maloki Dawkins' 'meme' was to the general public perhaps, but very much in vogue among the computer science and science fiction crowd that built out the Internet in the 1990s, and then social media in the 00s. Dawkins' 'meme' - self-replicating idea - pioneered the idea of 'viral' content, and that's why the word got repurposed to describe bite-sized visual versions of such content.
@maloki @Sweet_Tango_Chill The key idea behind a meme in the Dawkins sense is that it's an idea that, once it's out in the world, spreads on its own, you don't have to keep pushing it.
On the weirder fringes of the Internet (that later consolidated into 4chan and Reddit - where the image meme was invented) various creepy people ten years ago used to brag about their skills in 'memetic engineering'. What they now call 'shitposting' and 'fake news', and got a President elected.
@natecull @Sweet_Tango_Chill #untagme
So I can get unstuck on mastodon, :D
@Sweet_Tango_Chill @maloki So, meme itself is a meme, then? 🤔
as a second opinion, the word 'meme' definitely had a life on the internet before it came into it's common, more specific, usage. The words "memetic hazard" are littered all over old creepypasta, for example.
One is ABSOLUTELY a subset of the other though, which is why I would list the "element of culture" definition first. meme(2) is just a specific expression of meme(1) that has the most obvious viral properties of any piece of internet culture.
@maloki @Sweet_Tango_Chill I once worked with some people who did the OPPOSITE, in that they would use the word meme to mean basically *anything*, the way people often use "thing" or "stuff", and it was a pretty gr8 meme.
@maloki I kinda want to read your thesis when it's done. :)
@frankiesaxx I will be publishing it on academia.edu :)
@frankiesaxx after the school publishes it on their website first. :)
@maloki yay! I will read it then!
@maloki wait wait the thesis is about _memes_? Got be thinking.. if you can typeset emoji in LaTeX...
@MightyPork No it's not about memes. but sometimes in research you end up reading about other stuff. :P
It's about adaptation, which in itself is like a meme, because it's a replication with change.
but, on the internet this definition is more interesting:
"an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations."
#meme