Ceci n'est pas un pipe

The following post is about what the following post is not about. If you're not familiar with them already, the history and theory of memes would be a useful prerequisite.

Right, then: anyone who knows me has probably read the book Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, or ought to. To summarize briefly, it revolves around a "metavirus" that is both biological and informational, and can therefore be spread either through sexual contact or by seeing it in digital form. Among its other effects, it exposes some otherwise deeply buried linguistic structures within your brain and, as a result, renders you more vulnerable to infection by memes. Think of it like AIDS for the mind; your natural defense system is slowly stripped away.

This is all a perfectly good description of the Internet; as the linked article above suggests, "the ultimate meme vector". Ideas that are silly, wasteful, misleading, unfunny, or just plain stupid spread across the minds of the world with a speed and scope that would cause the CDC to swoon. Our poor minds, with their prodigious yet limited resources, are forced to spend more and more time filtering this tidal wave until they collapse of exhaustion.

Which brings me back to my original point: I've made it a conscious effort not to use this journal to spread other people's memes, and I wish more would follow suit. No collecting all the links I've read all day, no quizzes, no "which are you?", etc. I think of it as doing my part to boost the Internet's immune system. Otherwise, we get locked into an echo chamber, where the same ideas circulate over and over again. Just ask anyone who relies on (usually only liberal or only conservative) blogs as their sole source of news.

Though, I suppose I might occasionally try to start my own memes, as in the previous post. But that's another matter entirely. :) Regardless of whether you believe any of this is literally true, it can be a useful metaphor. Unfortunately, I've just gone and spread the meme of memes themselves. Recursion joke, old: see recursion joke, old.

Back to more usual mundane matters. Got a final on Thursday, after which only one more class stands between me and a master's degree. I think I'll enjoy being called Master...

Off to Kansas City again this weekend, to visit Russ, go to the Boulevard Brewery, and generally debauch. So yay to that.

I posed this question to a friend the other day without having an answer myself, which is hardly fair: if indeed we are reincarnated, do we keep meeting the same soul mate in lifetime after lifetime? And if so, is that a good thing or a bad thing?