As inactive as I am on social media these days, I somehow feel more inundated by it. There’s a good reason for that, one that Willy Staley articulates well in this breezy thinkpiece: These platforms, via the people who harness it to create social capital for themselves, have become the wellspring for culture both online and off. Congressional representatives saying “6-7” wasn’t the beginning, and it definitely wasn’t the end.
The “6-7” meme was revelatory because of the immense gap between its symbolic payload — essentially nonexistent — and its cultural penetration. It worked like tracer dye running through our information ecosystem, revealing its functions and dysfunctions. And the strange thing about this meme, or slang, or whatever you want to call it, is that our shared world of people, places, things and events didn’t factor into it. It simply flowed out from social media platforms into that world — with an extraordinary degree of success, and for no real reason at all, a secret message to us from the world within the phone.
Or perhaps a demonstration of force: This is how things are going to go from now on.
More picks about digital culture
The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age
“Why are we letting algorithms rewrite the rules of art, work, and life?”
Heavily Persecuted, Highly Influential: China’s Online Feminist Revolution
“On Chinese social media, women are censored and harassed, but undeterred.”
How “Chuck Norris Facts” Gave Birth to the Modern Meme
“It’s hard to say Ian Spector officially invented the meme. But he was, at minimum, a key early influencer.”
How Chess.com Became ‘the Wild West of the Streaming World’
“While much of the e-sports industry struggles after billions in investments, Chess.com has gone in the opposite direction.”
The Secret History Of The Internet’s Funniest Buzzer-Beater
“[E]very so often, if you dig into a piece of internet ephemera, the context—the who, what, when, where, and why—have the potential to dramatically enhance your understanding of the freak accident that you just witnessed.”
The Twisted, Stolen Legacy of the ‘Matrix’ Red Pill
“The story of how the Wachowskis’ philosophical-crossroads moment was co-opted by bad-faith actors and a political movement is a complex tale about semiotics, the internet, and modern pop culture.”
