Antimemetics

Explicit resistance to bureaucracy tends to be ineffective, because there is no clear authority to overthrow. Because nobody is singularly responsible for bad protocols, participants can get trapped in indefinitely in suboptimal outcomes.

-Nadia Asparouhova, Antimemetics

…bureaucracies can be thought of as a type of antimemeplex, in which a series of antimemes act together to stay hidden from our awareness.

-Nadia Asparouhova, Antimemetics

…artefacts are a gift to their future selves, and to anyone else who might come across the same problem and try to solve it. Even if one person disappears, our collective memory carries on.

-Nadia Asparouhova, Antimemetics

News feeds, for example, are designed for forgetting. They are optimised for breadth of exposure, rather than depth of engagement.

-Nadia Asparouhova, Antimemetics

…there may always be an audience that’s eager to engage with these topics, but who comprises that audience is constantly changing. Each new wave of champions has a different agenda from their predecessors, and they often prioritise short-term goals over the sustained, coordinated efforts required to achieve lasting change.

-Nadia Asparouhova,

Cringe is more than just internet slag: It’s an entirely new, and dangerous, way of operating. Before cringe, people just….tried things, some of which landed, and come of which did not. Cringe suppresses the truth-tellers: The chaotic, creative idiots who gleefully prod us to reassess what we thing we know and believe. It raises the cost of taking

In order to play the role of truth-teller, an outsider must reflect the community’s values.

-Nadia Asparouhova, Antimemetics

…retreating from the chaos only protects ourselves. It is akin to fleeing to gated communities or the suburbs to avoid the dangers of cities, burying ourselves in the comforts of “local community,” while avoiding the hard work of getting things done and civilisational scale. Taken into its logical conclusion, the divestment of all members from

If everyone uses the same calculation to determine where to allocate their attention, we will create a brittle system where too many people do the same type of work, which reduces overall fitness and leaves us vulnerable to blindspots.

-Nadia Asparouhova, Antimemetics