Found it first here - https://mastodon.social/@BonehouseWasps/111692479718694120
Not sure if this is the right community to discuss here in Lemmy?
this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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Its time to start talking about "memetic effluent." In the same way corporations polluted our physical world, they're pollution our memetic world. AI spewing garbage data is just the most obvious way, but corporations have been toxifying our memetic space for generations.
This memetic effluent will make sorting through data harder and harder over the years. But the oil and tobacco industries undermined science and democracy for decades with it's own memetic effluent in order to protect their business for decades. Advertising is it's own effluent that distorts and destroys language. Jerry Rubin said it in 1970, "How can I tell you 'I love you' after hearing 'cars love shell?'"
While physical effluent destroys our physical environment making living in the world harder, memetics effluent destroys meaning and makes thinking about and comprehending the world harder. Both are the garbage side effects of the perpetuation of capitalism.
This example of poisoning the data well is just too obvious to ignore, but there are so many others.
It's interesting, because the idea is basically that knowledge and ideas should be constructive, so as not to pollute the sum of human knowledge.
So that raises the question, what is the constructive conclusion to "memetic effluent"? Without one, is the concept itself an example of such effluent?
It also raises the very thorny issue of who adjudicates what is and is not "memetic effluent."
"One man's trash is another man's treasure," as the saying goes.
Yes, but the answer here is Google. Google is already making these calls, whether or not we get to discuss it.