We think of the meme now as the lowest form of culture of a standard trope that is used to explain a situation by shorthand, but the reality is more complex.
The text book definition of a meme would be an idea, behaviour, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. Richard Dawkin coined the word meme in his book The Selfish Gene, I have also heard the concept articulated as an idea virus.
So that would bring in things in everyday life that you take for granted like the way we tie up shoelaces. People who have been in the military tend to use a ‘ladder approach’ versus going criss-cross.
Its what can bind tribal affiliations together. Many people support the same sports team as the people around them such as neighbours, peers or friends and family. The initial choice about the team to support is memetic in nature.
Memes have moved beyond being an analogy to being a badge of belonging and even the lingua franc itself. If one looks at 4Chan’s /b/ channel mostly consists of anonymous users bombarding memes at each other. Occasionally there will be a request to customise a meme image from a user and the community piles in.
Memetics became a formal field of academic study in the 1990s. The nucleus for it as a field of study was Dawkins books and a series of columns that started appearing in the Scientific American during the early 1980s by Douglas Hofstadter and Media Virus by Douglas Rushkoff.
Jeremy Deller is famous for examining 1980s events from the MIner’s strike to rave culture. Most notably his work Acid Brass, working with the William Fairey Brass Band on cover versions of early house and techno music. In this documentary he walks a group of sixth formers through the context that rave culture began in.
Jeremy Deller has hosted a reenactment of the Battle Of Orgreave and made an inflatable version of Stonehenge in a piece called Sacrilege.
Jacobs cream crackers
As a child, I would have eaten several cream crackers manufactured on this line. In more recent times the production of Jacobs products were moved abroad for cost cutting reasons. There is something mesmerising about watching the process of production.
Cyberpunk
Quinn’s Ideas exploration of Neuromancer pointed out some links that I hadn’t realised in the formation of cyberpunk as a genre and cultural force.
LA Noir
Why film noir happened when it did, and why it is so synonymous with the city of Los Angeles is explained in this documentary which features an interview with author James Eilroy.
EDC
Everyday Carry (EDC) – whilst having evolved as an online cultural phenomenon has been around for as along as men and boys have had pockets. My childhood friend Nigel was obsessing about Swiss Army knives and really small Leica binoculars back when I was in primary school. His Dad was a well-to-do dentist and Nigel fulfilled his EDC goals before coming a teen. It was only natural that it eventually became a thing when the internet came around. Kevin Kelly had been talking about cool tools on the the web for the past quarter of a century; Drop.com when it was founded over 12 years ago covered products that would be considered EDC today.
All of which leaves me more puzzled why EDC has sudden become the focus of media attention in the quality newspapers.
Beauty masks have been mainstreamed by the mainstreaming of Asian beauty culture norms. There isn’t the faff of having to make something up or smear something on. Instead, pop the mask on, leave it on for a specified time (usually 15 minutes) and peel off. If Switzerland is the home of fine watchmaking or chocolate; then South Korea is the home of beauty masks. Beauty masks are really relaxing to pop on whilst bingewatching a show or film series.
This footage of beauty mask manufacture in Busan South Korea intrigued me. I was surprised by how small scale production was in this factory, even though it’s a batch manufacture process, I was expecting greater scale given how ubiquitous Korean beauty masks are.
Can Echo Finally Break Through in Home Automation? – Amazon has expanded the Echo line to include models that are tailored to certain use cases and certain rooms – like small screen models for bedside, large screen models for kitchens, high quality speakers for living rooms and dens, and small, inexpensive models for everywhere. We see efforts to get Echos into multiple rooms in Amazon’s promotions, where they sold multiple device packages of the least expensive models in the early days, and aggressively discount a variety of models regularly throughout the year. Amazon clearly has room to go in pursuing this strategy. Nine years in, most Amazon Echo owners still have only one device. In the most recent twelve-month period, 69% of US Echo owners have one, and about one-quarter have two or three
You need to talk to your kid about AI. Here are 6 things you should say. | MIT Technology Review – a variant of sage advice for everyone 1. Don’t forget: AI is not your friend 2. AI models are not replacements for search engines 3. Teachers might accuse you of using an AI when you haven’t 4. Recommender systems are designed to get you hooked and might show you bad stuff 5. Remember to use AI safely and responsibly 6. Don’t miss out on what AI’s actually good at
Move over AI, quantum computing to be most powerful technology | VentureBeat – Leaders in the military and cybersecurity community believe that quantum computing could become a potentially serious threat in 4 – 6 years. Quantum computers have been proven to vastly outperform traditional computers on specific sets of problems. A vastly outperforming computer like this could pose a serious threat to cybersecurity across several critical industries like banking and logistics. While potentially impactful in the future, the technology is currently limited by a lack of ability to reduce probabilities of errors. Extreme temperatures required to operate the computers are also a barrier.
One of the best YouTube channels that I currently subscribe to is the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan. I used to enjoy visiting the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong. I particularly enjoyed their public talks. The Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan seems to run to a similar model as its Hong Kong counterpart. Its YouTube channel shares the regular public talks that they host by a wide range of experts. More Japan related content here.
Ronnie Drew on the Dublin Pub
Ronnie Drew of The Dubliners talks about the iconic nature of the Dublin pub. O’Donoghue’s was famous in Irish music and particularly famous for the short film O’Donoghue’s Opera, which Drew starred in.
Incremental metal forming
Additive manufacturing has managed to offer substitutes for short runs of moulded, cast or milled parts. Incremental metal forming offers a similar substitute for complex stamped parts. It’s an area that is is being currently developed. This has more potential than you would think due to the high cost and commitment to tool making needed if you wanted to use a process like progressive stamping.
The Boy and The Heron
The Boy and The Heron aka How do you live? is Studio Ghibli‘s latest film. I picked through the trailer with friends who are fellow Studio Ghibli fans. The Japanese movie title references a Japanese book How do you live? which features in the films universe. How do you live is a book where an Uncle documents his discussions with his nephew as the boy faces up to the challenges of childhood. In some respects How do you live? reminded of Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World – in terms of feeling, if not style.
How do you live? is as well known in Japanese circles as a children’s classic in the same way that Ursula LeGuinn’s The Wizard of Earthsea would be known to English speakers. But in English it doesn’t have the same cultural resonance, so hence the much more descriptive The Boy and The Heron. We were all relieved that the film is not a 3D CGI work like Earwig & The Witch.
Looking at the trailer it evoked memories of other Studio Ghibli films
I got to see the film at a special screening at London International Film Festival. But not going to share any spoilers until well after it goes on general release, save to say it’s well worth watching, but you knew that anyway.
Create real magic
Coca-Cola tapped into the trend for generative AI to allow consumers to remix existing advert artwork and make their own version. As far as I know Accenture was one of the main agency partners involved. This is less about the future of advertising and more about how the technology itself has become the meme, rather like all things cyber in the mid 1990s.
A la Soledad O’Brien presenting with a Leo LePorte voiced avatar on MSNBC show The Site during 1996 and 1997.
The YouTube algorithm can take you into odd places, so it was with me and the London Watch. The watch collecting community is a global connected bunch of super passionate and and seriously nerdy people. It’s not the kind of stuff I would generally have bothered with. Watch collectors, particularly at the premium to luxury end of the scale have have started to talk about London (and by the implication, the rest of the UK) as hive of crime.
Watch community YouTubers often do a wrist check to show what timepiece they have on. Usually you will see a luxury or cult timepiece. But I have started to notice a few videos talking about the presenters empty wrist as a London Watch. You can see it on this live stream by Paul Thorpe just after the 9-minute mark. He was doing the video from right by the Oxford Circus shopping area in Central London.
The implication being that only going watchless or wearing a plain looking Casio is the right ‘watch to wear’ in Central London.
Crime tsunami
A random walk through Google News yielded these examples:
In February 2022 Saul Murray was drugged and stabbed to death for his watch collection. East London trio convicted after man’s ‘horrific’ death | Hackney Gazette – describes how they befriended him to gain access to his home, drugged him so they could search the apartment and then stabbed him and left him to bleed out
It took seven years for YouTube celebrity Yianni to talk about having his watch taken in a violent robbery that occurred back in 2016
My list of robberies isn’t exhaustive, but the constant drip, drip, drip of this news helped drive the idea of the London Watch.
Staggering scale
In October 2022, a luxury auction house ran a public safety campaign advising watch collectors to leave their pieces at home after they were alarmed by the Metropolitan Police’s own crime numbers. This came after the police tried and failed to assure Londoners and tourists over the summer. In April and May 2022, there was a 60 percent increase in high value watch robberies just in Central London with a 100 having been reported and investigated by the Metropolitan Police.
Watch crime has been happening in European tourist spots as well such as Barcelona and Paris, but the UK seems to be particularly blighted. London based watch crime has even attracted the attention of US watch collector hobbyist site Hodinkee who featured it heavily in an article on the international view.
Between January and July 2021 there were 377 reported watch thefts, according to the Met Police compared to 621 in the same period during 2022.
Police have attempted to stop some incidentsin progress, but the scale of the problem seems to be beyond their current capability and capacity.
Possible contributing factors
Rich opportunity. London is an international city and hosts high net worth individuals from different countries all year round. Many choose to make it their home
Luxury watches get a good return for the thieves. Apparently a watch will net the thief half its face value when fenced. By comparison diamond or gold jewellery will fetch roughly 10 percent of its value. I was surprised by this as all high end watches have a traceable serial number, which would make it harder to pass on. Many are apparently stolen and shipped out of the country, though some end up for sale online
Thieves have very little chance of getting caught. The amount of incidents that are happening versus the amount of successful police investigations means that both watch and phone thefts are a low risk, lucrative option for thieves. Despite London have a large amount of CCTV systems, only a small percentage of the crimes are solved. Finally the police are under-resourced for the scale of the task they face
The high level of violence involved is troubling and reason for it isn’t immediately apparent.
Thieves seem to use social media research and spotters to find their mark. Many of these spotters work as staff in restaurants, hotels, bars and night clubs frequented by the rich.
Luxury sales will be impacted, this looks like the likely reason that auction houses are actively warning people in London about the risk and how to mitigate it through public information campaigns
Tourists are less likely to spend money in hospitality if they feel that some of the staff might be setting them up to be robbed
Tourists and business travellers are less likely to come to London, if they feel that the risk of violent crime is disproportionate
For the time being, be sensible and stay safe out there by wearing a London Watch.
Ambient content is the name that I gave to a peculiar type of video content that has been rising in popularity over time at odds with online media. It’s at odds with the direction of online content in general and technological convergence.
Yes we’re in the middle of a metaverse winter at the moment as western platform companies have reduced or withdrawn spending on it. But gaming seems to be as healthy as ever. There is a lean forward bias to online media with the exception of streaming services.
The ambient content by these ‘influencers looks as if it is taking things in a very different direction:
It’s lean back content, there is no call to action or actively engage
What does ambient content look like?
Here’s examples from the couple of accounts that I have noticed.
@nushitoneko
@nushitoneko is a divorced lady living alone with two cats in Japan and apparently holding down two jobs. Her simple cooking that relies on a lot on frozen ingredients looks lovely. She also captures the occasional McDonalds meals and Starbucks take-out in her films. If you are in Japan, you can buy products that she uses in her everyday life from her ‘Rakuten ROOM‘ which is a bit like an Amazon affiliate marketing page.
https://youtu.be/9BYRPS8Lx5U
@Choki
@Choki is more design led. The Instagram account feels like a bit of personal art direction is in place. She shares her home with a rabbit and a cat. @Choki looks as if she might be about to launch some sort of e-commerce venture. She is in her late 20s or early 30s and focuses on unwinding from stress in her content.
https://youtu.be/PlMaH_1rxqo
@usakostyle
@usakostyle is a Japanese national living alone. Like @Choki is has a focus on interior design in her content. While there isn’t animal content in her videos that cute influence comes in from her love of Studio Ghibli animation and this can be seen in some of the detail nature shots she puts in her films, which feel like the background detail in Ghibli movies. She has a Rakuten affiliate marketing page.
@LouCslife
@LouCslife is a Filipino lady who has a corporate job working in Japan. I think that she is the youngest of the trio. Her content focuses more on cleaning and tidying up than on cooking. She has a small apartment that she keeps immaculate. She appears in her thumbnails of her videos, but its hard to know what she really looks like. She also is differentiated by her lack of pets and doesn’t even have an affiliate marketing page like @nushitoneko.
This isn’t only a ‘made in Japan’ phenomenon, but also in Korea as well.
@MariLife
@MariLife is a Korean housewife living in South Korea that shoots similar content, but does it on solo camping trips using the family MPV as her base camp. The style of the videos feel very similar to the Japanese created ambient content. @MariLife’s content is very polished and she has explain that all the footage including the drone footage is shot by herself.
Common aspects of ambient content
Common aspects of ambient content includes:
Relaxing soundtrack
Small moments of everyday life, but as long form content
It’s not educational in nature, but they might inspire you to try your hand at cooking once you’ve watched cooking channels
30+ years old content creator
The idea that (with the exception of pets) its ok to be your own company. They might be alone, but they don’t feel lonely
Non-aspirational in nature. The content creators cooking skills and presentation is very good, but managed within a constrained budget. For instance @nushitoneko buys outfits sparingly from Shein and while she used a tablet for drawing as part of her online marketing job, when eight year old iPad died on her she moved to working on her phone and hasn’t replaced it yet. There are no product pitches or programme sponsors in the content. Instead it is about the small pleasures in the now, the simple satisfaction of a frozen pizza and drinking coffee while watching an anime or reading a book
No over-monetisation of content. For instance, @nushitoneko and usakostyle both have an affiliate page on Rakuten where you can buy some of the products that they have in their respective kitchens such as an electric sandwich maker
Greater degree of anonymity enjoyed by the content creators
I think that there content says a good deal about our stressed lives and seems to tie in with some of the things driving the audience desire for de-influence trend amongst TikTokers to be real.
