Author: Kelsie Nabben
Translation: Sissi@TEDAO
At the beginning of 2021, a tweet from the online community, Elon Musk, and Dogecoin caused a sensation, leading to a short-term surge in the market value of this humorous cryptocurrency to about $14 billion. Memes are truly interesting, deeply rooted in people's minds, and convey ideas in a concise and clear manner.
This phenomenon of meme spreading through the internet is also explored in the science fiction novel "Snow Crash". Although the statement "memes influence the market" is eye-catching, it seems that few people have truly delved into the meaning behind it, or have read "Snow Crash".
Meme = Weapon
In "Snow Crash", this phenomenon is referred to as "psychological virus". Meme is not just "visual humor" as described by the "Australian Financial Review". In fact, the term "meme" represents "memetics", which refers to a kind of information and cultural elements intended to take root in people's minds, effectively spreading ideas and thoughts.
The real-world application of these meme techniques, including memes spread through social media, especially targeted memes, has widely demonstrated their destructive impact on democratic processes. In addition, memes have also played a role in misinformation and false information about COVID-19, sparking protests against public health measures globally, with very real consequences.
In reality, memes are no laughing matter.
You should have invested in Bitcoin earlier. [Source: https://usaherald.com/elon-musk-simple-tweets-send-gamestop-bitcoin-doge-to-moon/]
Power of Netizens: Internet Memes and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)
Another real event followed closely after the "GameStop" stock price manipulation. It demonstrated how retail investors united and successfully countered the stock shorting operations of large Wall Street hedge funds. Through collective action, these retail investors not only protested against the strategies of hedge funds, but also effectively fought back against these funds in the market through coordinated cooperation and resource integration.
On platforms like Twitter and Reddit, we have witnessed similar group behaviors influencing the market, especially in "pump and dump" operations. This market manipulation has been ongoing for several years.
In the cryptocurrency field, we can also see similar group dynamics, especially in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). There is a subtle interactive relationship involving project founders and active users on online forums. This relationship is mainly driven by economic interests, as everyone hopes for the value of cryptocurrencies to rise.
This is a common criticism from other "peer-to-peer" decentralized technology projects and researchers in the blockchain field. Based on cryptocurrency, blockchain networks have envisioned an ideal technological future that is computer-controlled and free from political and governance issues by creating economic scarcity. The hostile sentiment between these different technology circles may be partly due to some projects failing to earn huge wealth from cryptocurrencies.
As these technologies develop, regulatory agencies have begun to intervene and take regulatory measures on these emerging markets and online spaces. The situation has become more complex. Meanwhile, the chat app "Discord" has banned some online forum groups due to hate speech.
This raises a question: In the increasingly integrated future of digital space and the real world, how will the network groups that can coordinate actions to influence physical markets and public behavior shape our world?
Cyberpunk Prophecy Comes True
As early as the 1990s, cypherpunks foresaw this trend. As they predicted, some extreme views in the "crypto-anarchist" community believe that online mobs and organized criminal groups are an inevitable result of a decentralized internet. The side effects of this trend are reflected in various aspects, including increasingly frequent, severe, and costly DDoS attacks, as well as the thriving dark web markets.
In the science fiction novel "Snow Crash", the author imagined a future where the online space is closely intertwined with everyday reality. The world in the book has been privatized, with different private cartels managing various areas of the city, allowing people to choose the jurisdiction they least object to. This description paints a vivid picture of a possible future for the online world.
At the same time, cryptocurrency projects have begun to realize that their work is actually about designing governance in a new, more decentralized, and digital way. This development indicates that digitalization and decentralization are not only trends in the technology field, but are also becoming important components of social and governance structures.
Governing the Future
As Elon Musk said, memes may really become a "controlling force of the future economy". If this is true, then the challenge we face is how to respond when the ideals of "freedom" and "justice" are no longer determined by the "invisible hand of the market" or the "immutable code of cryptocurrency", but rather originate from the "desire for memetics".
So, how should we create a network space based on "sharing" rather than "cartel control"?
In the distributed network community, there is a growing focus on governance design. People are gradually realizing that "decentralized autonomous organizations" are not flawless code machines to guide human behavior. Even permissionless digital infrastructure cannot completely avoid governance issues. Instead, we may need to find a better version in the inevitable digital world. In this case, Ostrom's theory becomes particularly important, as the theoretical framework of Elinor Ostrom, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, on managing public goods is becoming an important guide for online community governance. This provides us with a perspective to view digital infrastructure as "shared resources" or shared public goods, with the goal of co-building and co-maintaining, rather than as a tool for attack.
The emergence of Gamestop, Dogecoin, and more memes constantly reminds us that all infrastructure, including digital infrastructure, has political attributes. However, internet citizens should be aware that memes are a powerful tool in the war for mental and behavioral influence.
Education has been proven to be the most effective antidote. European researchers have created the game GoViral! to train students to identify and understand the development process of memes, helping them distinguish memes from false information.
Although information infrastructure provides individuals with greater freedom, power, and the possibility of participating in governance, we are still exploring life guidelines applicable to this era.
Original Article: After Gamestop, After Dogecoin: Memetics, Mobs, and the Future of the World
Unsplash@Kanchanara
Original Article References:
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