Memetic-Virology
“001010010010010110000101010101011101010010100 10010101000011011001101001011000010001001001000 Recording devices. Copiers. Faxes. Samplers. k-stammer (((re)re)reruns) cross-cut by orphan drift. Repeat infection. All hype hype hype hype hype hype hype hype hypervirus strains are plastic and interoperative.” — Nick Land, Hypervirus
Many viruses multiply by hijacking the cells they infect. Only in their host’s nucleus can they find the machines, proteins, and building blocks by which they can copy their genetic material (information) before infecting other cells.
One of the CCRU’s most important concepts is “hyperstition,” which is the mixing of “superstition” and “hyper” that describes the action of “successful ideas in the arena of culture.” They are ideas that, “once ‘downloaded’ into the cultural mainframe, engender apocalyptic positive feedback cycles.”
Like a virus, ideas infect the nucleus of a socius. Once the meme enters and inhabits the host, it uses its own social tools for positive feedback propagation. In the Spinozian sense, memes are the virus of the attribute of thought; the same way real viruses are material contagion for the attribute of extension.
Technological advancements in information technology and media allow the spread of information at lightspeed. Memes self-referentiality makes them particularly contagious, folding and unfolding into themselves and transforming their host’s behavior. A prominent example of meme contagion is the events unfolding with Dogecoin and GME stock. The power of memes has only recently been examined, information has always been a source for the centralization of power, but as memes spread, infecting host after host, the possibility of infecting malignant nodes or institutions of control that have dominated the socio-political landscape for so long is becoming a more tangible reality.
R0, pronounced “R naught,” is the mathematical term that indicates how contagious an infectious disease is. The question here is, what are useful ways of thinking of viral spread? If viral spread can be directly grafted onto ideological contagion, then the spread of ideas can be graphed log rhythmically instead of linearly.
Memes are Rhizomes; they connect arbitrarily and are not restricted by linearity or direct casual paths. The hubs, like the centralized state of the internet, make sit susceptible to memetic viral attacks. The idea of a decentralized internet creates the illusion that there is no vital interconnectedness. The image of the internet is a place of randomness in which one has the liberty to express themselves and has access to humanity’s collective information library.
This way of thinking only blinds one to the reality that we live in what Deleuze calls “societies of control,” the centralization of the internet of information by Google, Apple, Amazon only creates a false sense of freedom. People spend countless hours pretending to be free, hiding behind anonymity as these corporations track their every move.
There is a possible way out, and it involves using these structures and mechanisms to infect these centralized institutions. We’ve only seen a glimpse of a possible future, a “line of flight” from societies of control with Dogecoin and GME’s stock surge, which devastated Hedge funds. Memetic virality can lead to negative affectivity in the form of fascism. As stated, information proliferation and ideological spread are nothing new, but the way these tools can be harnessed and utilized at an accelerated level is.
Memetic-virology is a new way forward, a possibility for a future that could be, for a future that is already virtually here but dormant, waiting to be actualized.
