Severin Matusek

The internet is not only a network of cables, servers, and computers. It is an environment that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants and their use.

Because brands are constrained by the number of people who come in contact with them, they are directly affected by the accessibility and velocity of information.

Memes are actually a very important political tool in changing mass consciousness.

I was motivated to write Antimemetics in part because I felt dissatisfied with how we’ve unthinkingly glommed onto memetic warfare as a terminal explanation for why people do what they do. Memes and mimicry might explain some of our behavior today, but they aren’t an excuse to roll over and accept things exactly as they are.

They recast speculative investment as a valorized form of cultural participation—transforming economic risk into a mode of self-expression, and volatility into a kind of gamified solidarity.