Memeing ourselves to death?

“Who controls the memes, controls the universe.”

So wrote Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the current richest man in the world. Musk isn’t the only person who claims that memes can change the course of world history. Memes are cultural messages that have the potential to go viral, influencing the entire culture. These symbolic units of communication, meant to spawn imitation, are now just a fact of life, and if you control a culture’s memes, you may well control the culture.

In a 2017 episode of This American Life, a Donald Trump supporter credited memes for electing the 45th president of the United States, saying, “We did it. We memed him into the presidency. We memed him into power. We [obscenity]-posted our way into the future.” In a culture increasingly dependent on social media, memes get things done. They can create a new reality. But this new world is also unstable and even dangerous. Memes can destroy as well as create. They can communicate truth or advance a lie. Consider the “Karen” meme. It exploded in popularity in 2020, but what was supposed to be entertainment quickly became a tool of abuse.

Pastors, teachers, and parents can probably all testify about cases where young people have dramatically changed their behavior, values, and even identity because of mass social imitation, which is what memes advance. The term comes from Richard Dawkins’ landmark work, The Selfish Gene. Genes are “replicators,” he explains, and there are other important replicators that also shape humanity. And then he introduces the meme: “Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.” One need not agree with Darwin’s overall evolutionary theory, as I certainly do not, to see the significance of Dawkins’ observations about imitation and social development. Memes are copied socially, by people imitating one another, and then they are copied mentally, as they are imprinted on the human brain. This is no joking matter. It is profoundly real.

Social imitation is also one important subject in Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. Building upon the work of Dr. Lisa Littman, Shrier argues that rapid-onset gender dysphoria is not a straightforward biological or physiological phenomenon but rather a case of “peer contagion,” which is a sort of wide-scale social imitation. This is why clinics in the United Kingdom, as well as Canada, Sweden, and Finland, have been reporting increases in female-to-male medical transition by as much as 4,400 percent. Shrier calls it a craze. We could just as easily call it a meme.

Ecclesiastical communities have also experienced the power of memes. Denominational annual assemblies have seen the use and abuse of social media. Memes can even change personality and behavior. We see this in right-wing forms, as laypeople and even clergy adopt elements of the “manosphere” or dissident right. But it’s just as prominent with the left. The “exvangelical” and “#ChurchToo” movements are clear cases of memes at work. They are not simply instances of theological or rational debate; they are units of social communication, held together by common meaning.

As Christians, we will probably always struggle to “control the memes.” The world is simply bigger than us, and online culture is often fueled by the sort of cynicism and mockery that stands contrary to Biblical social ethics. The more contemporary memes guide and control a Christian, the more worldly we will find ourselves.

And yet, we cannot afford to ignore the memes. Gone are the days when we can contrast the internet with “the real world.” Rather, the internet more and more drives what happens in the broader world, with initially niche or even bizarre memes breaking out into the church, the school, the home, and broader civil society. Those people who have failed to study and understand the memes will find themselves easily manipulated.

Christians need to understand the memes, not be mastered by the memes, and use the memes for higher and more noble purposes. We must not allow memes, whether online or in-person, to be one more destructive tool with which we “amuse ourselves to death.” But, at the same time, we must not fail to take them seriously.