Claims about the evolution of memes

GoodToSell serves up a cyclical/asymptotic model of meme evolution and competition:

This is also an industry dominated by network effects. The forces that lead to such explosive growth, such as the scalability of info-tech, also lead to its downfall, as one or two companies dominate each niche. This means that the profitabilty component of evolution lessens its selective power, as platforms collect monopoly rents once all our attention has been accounted for.

Finally, algo-generated memes competed a little too well there for a minute. The shrillness reached its peak sometime in the past 3 years, and yet here we are, not in a civil war. The ideas were selected, in the inital expansion and takeover of memes, for pure potency and engagement, but not for accuracy or longevity. As people catch on, we will build up a societal defense immune system against purely mimetic viruses. Even now, I see many people simply detaching, having been burned thinking we were entering a societal event horizon—it turns out material reality was still dictated by material necessity, and the old powers that be are still in control, if temporarily perturbed. 4chan may still spin off a potent meme every once in a while, causing people to think that vaccines are population control, but after getting burned enough, and evading fact-checkers and censorship, people will eventually fall into habituation, and learned epistemic helplessness, back into the arms of traditional media, willing and occaisonally able to interpret things accurately…

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