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Media Memes and Prosumerist Ethics: Notes Toward a Theoretical Examination of Memetic Audience
Behavior
Grant Kien
Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies published online 12 November 2013
DOI: 10.1177/1532708613503785
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CSCXXX10.1177/1532708613503785Cultural Studies <span class="symbol" cstyle="symbol"></span> Critical MethodologiesKien

Article

Media Memes and Prosumerist Ethics:

Notes Toward a Theoretical Examination
of Memetic Audience Behavior

Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies

XX(X) 18
2013 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/1532708613503785
csc.sagepub.com

Grant Kien1

Abstract
This article argues that media memes have arisen as a unique media phenomenon in the context of our globally networked
condition, which manifests in the physical world as hugely disproportional effects. Thus, memes invoke unique ethical
implications, perpetuating issues such as hipster racism and slactivism. The author works forward from Godwins statement
that we have an obligation to improve our informational environment (Godwin, 1994). Deconstructing several examples
of memetic disproportional effect, the article argues that Godwins counter-meme solution alone is not enough to
correct damage done by harmful memes. Examining memes through several traditional communication theory lenses, the
author concludes by suggesting several principles that could ethically improve online behavior and address the unique ways
memes perpetuate social ills.
Keywords
internet memes, media theory, counter-meme, hacktivism, prosumer
Back during the infancy of the World Wide Web, Mike Godwin
raised an ethical question about netizens responsibility to
counter harmful information on the internet, and observed that
viral memes are capable of doing lasting damage (Godwin,
1994). Mr. Godwin is most famous for his experiment in meme
creation known as Godwins Law, which states that as an
online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one (Godwin,
1994). In fact, according to his own writing, Godwins Law is
not based on an actual probability equation or anything more
than his personal experiences in UseNet group discussions.
The intention of the meme was to counter overly casual comparisons with Nazi Germany and Hitlers fascism, which
Godwin disliked because of the way they misrepresent and
trivialize The Holocaust. Godwins statement itself is thus not
the main point, but rather, what its success proved about viral
content online. The inclusion of Godwins Law in the 2012
edition of the Oxford Dictionary stands at the pinnacle of a
large stack of proof demonstrating that it is possible to purposely create what he called counter-memes that would
hypothetically serve to correct inaccuracies and oppressions
online. In an article explaining how his experiment worked,
Godwin also warned, Anyone on the Net has the power to
affect stock prices. (Or worse: a fraudulent re-creation of the
Tylenol-poisoning scare could cause a national or international
panic.) (Godwin, 1994).
Godwins warning came long before Jim Cramers Mad
Money program on CNBC had been conceived, but when

the program became popular in the 2000s, it demonstrated

exactly what he had foretold: The ease of online stock trading made it possible for avid viewers with home computers
to immediately act on Jim Cramers televised advice, resulting in short market fluctuations matching the advice he
gave on his show (Engelberg, Sasseville, & Williams,
2010). Nearly twenty years after his initial warning, we are
still coming to terms with the full implications of what
Godwin had foreseen, and what he said was an obligation
to improve our informational environment (Godwin,
1994). However, closer examination of the problem and the
unique features of internet memes suggest that the solution
to what I have come to think of as phenomena of disproportional media effects may not be as simple as his imperative to create counter-memes. Rather, the research I present
here leads me to suggest that in this age of hipster racism1
and mass user-generated mass content (two different but
related mass concepts), the focus must equally be on
media ethics education and the ethical decision-making
abilities of fellow internet users.
The word meme seems to be a rather abused term in its
reduction by media studies to mere internet phenomena. As
1

California State University, East Bay, Hayward, USA

Corresponding Author:
Grant Kien, California State University, East Bay, 25800 Carlos Bee
Blvd., Hayward, CA 94542-3014, USA.
Email: Grant.Kien@csueastbay.edu

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Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies XX(X)

2
Burman (2012) has elaborated, its deployment into various
disciplinary discourses has far removed the term from its origin. Dawkins original definition of the term as an organic,
self-replicating, and evolving unit of culture was offered as
an explanation for the way selfish genes might make selections (see Dawkins, 2006). However, contemporary media
theorists have, for the most part, built on Aungers (2002)
description of electronic memes, appropriating the term to
describe content that goes viral through social media. The
media meme or internet meme (often shortened to just
meme, as I will do in this article) has become a way to
describe content that takes on distributional characteristics
and reach that appear to an observer as if it has a life-force of
its own. Such content seems to jump exponentially from one
site of hosted information to numerous others, like a cold
virus jumps from one human body to numerous other bodies.
In media studies, this is the basic concept of viral distribution
of information (aka going viral), involving an exponential
rhizomatic pattern of distribution, growth, and mutation
much like a living pathogen.
The results of such media phenomena can be seen in the
example of Mad Money mentioned above. In another case,
an aged bus monitor, Karen Klein, who was bullied by teens
in the spring of 2012 suddenly found herself with $700,000
in hand, raised through small online donations from thousands of users after a video of the harassment went viral.
While one might agree the victim of the bullying deserves
some societal recompense for the indignity suffered, in the
past, an apology from the perpetrators and perhaps a small
reward would have been considered in line with the damage
done. However, in the present, such massive over-reaction
facilitated through social media networks is almost commonplace. And it can be as equally negative as positive.
The case of a teen athlete who was barred from Olympic
competition due to his unfortunate decision to participate in
the 2011 Vancouver Hockey Riot is another example of disproportional media effect. Where in the past, teenagers
using bad judgment might be given a warning and a punishment befitting the scale of the infraction, Nathan Kotylak
and his entire family became the victims of an online witch
hunt, causing his father to shut down his business for several days while they went into hiding after their home
address was publicized online, and they received death
threats from would be vigilantes.
Backgrounded by these everyday phenomena, the argument of this article continues thus: Our civilizations current
global/social/digitally networked media provides a virtual,
simulacra-based environment that is uniquely different from
the earths physical environment, and yet is profoundly part
of our normal everyday experiences. It creates an environment perfect for the nurturing of electronic internet memes,
a type of content that thrives in the virtual environment,
seeming to take on lives of their own that disconnects the
signifiers from their origins. Thus, the simulacrum that

comprises the virtual environment is populated by freefloating signifiers (i.e., simulacra) that easily get repurposed
and passed from one site to many others through the actions
of individuals using their dual agency as media consumers
and producers.2
To be clear, media in this article refers to the complex
hybrid system of machines and people that distribute information. In our contemporary situation, it is the global network of informational exchange I am most concerned with,
and the internet in particular.3 What follows from this point
discusses how internet memes come to exist as a media phenomena, how they are encountered, possible influence that
they might have on our cultural patterns, thoughts and
behaviors, and a theoretical expose of what distinguishes
them as a unique form of media content.
Students of semiotics typically learn de Saussures
(1959) classic formula, S = Sr / Sd, as the basis of how signs
come to have meaning. The sign (S) is comprised of the
signifier (Sr) and the thing signified (Sd). When I was an
undergraduate student, this was exemplified that the signifier (Sr) cat is meaningful because Sr (the word cat) refers
to a fluffy cute animal, and we know things like the actual
fluffy cute animal signified (Sd) exists in the physical
world. The abstract signifier is grounded in the actual physical world we live in. Baudrillard (1995), seeming to channel
Benjamin (1978), explained that Simulacra is created when
the signifier becomes disconnected from what it historically
signified, leaving the signifier to float freely and be reattached to whatever object an audience member chooses to
use it for. This change can be reflected in de Saussures formula as S = Sr/?. Hence, the meaning of a signifier can be
reassigned, because one of the variables of the formula
becomes an unknown. The user can attach the sign to an
object or concept of ones own choice, whether it actually
exists in the real world or is simply an imagined fantasy or
myth. Much scholarly effort has gone toward exploring the
outcomes of this condition for our civilization, which we
have come to characterize as an aspect of postmodernism.
The impacts of this line of inquiry have been crucial to
understanding our present physical and cultural circumstances, in which we see everything capable of signifying as
a trove of significance awaiting our deconstruction. This
complex logic has enabled the evolution of Western consumer culture to the point of seeming absurdity. With far
more goods than needed to cover our basic needs, consumers struggle in a daily battle not to nourish their bodies, but
rather to make the best possible aesthetic and brand choices.
Prosumerism has become a crucial survival skill in the 21st
century. People struggle every day to participate to the best
of their ability in their creative consumption, striving to
overcome issues of taste, economic ability, and the paralysis
of having to decide from too many options. This same logic
of prosumerism functions in the virtual world, but with perhaps fewer encumbrances.

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Kien
Bill Nichols (2003) observed that all virtual space is
simulacra, and control for new media audience members
comes from the power to search and select from among
available choices. In the virtual environment that most of us
are accustomed to navigating (i.e., the internet and other
digital networks), there is no need whatsoever to keep aesthetic signifiers attached to the original object or concept
signified. Nor is there any pretense that we should. Unlike
the physical world wherein we generally believe the origin
of every relevant signifier we use did once (if not still)
reside, digital spaces are constructed entirely as simulacral
zones. Signifiers in virtual space (in essence, electrons
arranged into patterned flows) are and have always been
free floating, available for us to use toward whatever virtual ends we want. Netizens immersed in cyberculture
expect to be able to change the meanings of signifiers
instantly and at will. The result is that in virtual environments, information divorced from its origin is consumed by
end users and audience members according to tastes, and
reproduced according to a highly selective consumer culture logic of spectacular representation of a constructed
idea of oneself. In effect, internet audiences self-select a
collage or pastiche of media representations to stand in as
their virtual presence. These virtual representations reflect
how users think about and act out their self-selected worldview in the physical world. And, of course, their actions
carry with them physical world consequences.
While there is a positive aspect to empowering media
consumers to manipulate the content they choose in that it
frees information seekers from the yoke of corporate media
by creating what Jenkinss (2012) describes as a third media
space, it brings with it a problem we are facing as a society:
In this new media configuration, people are not challenged
with new ideas, but rather, consume challenging ideas with
an attitude of sarcasm and irony, as if all content is merely
for ones own entertainment and comes with no real world
consequences attached to it. In such circumstances, intelligence may be displaced by cleverness, demonstrated in the
ability to transform media content from one intended meaning to another in an act of postmodern playfulness. Small
communities online and offline may become solipsistic and
self-referential, preferring a mentality of groupthink, and
not be open to challenges or influences that might under
normal circumstances improve the strength of their community and new intellectual breakthroughs (what some on
Reddit.com and other social media sites refer to as the
Hive Mind, or a form of what Baudrillard (1988) called
Neo Tribalism). An example from my personal experience can help illustrate the issue.
In 2011, I saw an image shared by a Facebook friend
contrasting an armed Tea Party rally with the arrest of an
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protester (see Appendix B). As
thousands had already done, I reshared it on my own wall
with the message,

A clear demonstration of how the armed tea party is

institutionalized as part of the states hegemonic apparatus
(i.e., polices rather than is policed) while the unarmed 99% are
refused movement from the subaltern strata due to its
oppositional reading (i.e., disagreement with) of the states
policies (i.e., are policed rather than police).

Soon after, friends started to like the post. For the most
part, they were the usual suspects who tend to like most
things I post that include a critical cultural commentary.
However, out of the blue, an anomaly occurred. One of my
Facebook friends who I knew was more of a Tea Party supporter and less of an OWS supporter also liked the post.
On reflection, I realized that he liked the post because he
agreed with the version reality it portrayed, and did not find
his hegemonic reading at all problematic. It did not matter
that the post was meant to communicate sarcasm by forcing
an oppositional translation. He simply took the message at
face value, and liked it alongside those who brought a more
ironic interpretation to their reading. This moment clearly
demonstrated to me that there is a unique and potentially
negative effect from media memes that use irony or sarcasm
in an attempt to communicate political and societal information. They may do an outstanding job of uniting a community of sarcastic media consumers, but ultimately such
memes present little or no challenge to the thoughts and
attitudes held by the very people and issues they are meant
to confront. As a result, the audience may include the
ironic community members who find the content resonates with them because they bring an oppositional reading
to it, and the sincere community members who take the
message at its hegemonic face value. This is a less than
ideal circumstance for at least three identifiable reasons.
First, in the media environment Ive described above,
social problems are treated as isolated incidences of individual bad luck, dismissed, or worse, appropriated in the
name of irony and sarcastic humor, but not solved for the
people who must live with the consequences of oppression
such as racism, sexism, ablism, ageism, and so on, which
are reduced to simplistic aesthetic portrayals. Concepts of
truth and reality seem to have become so contingent as to be
unattainable by the individual. In their place, the masses act
out in physical space the beliefs they have constructed about
themselves and the world in virtual space.
The comedy central show Tosh.0 capitalizes on exactly
this current of irony running through a large group of audience members tastes, eliciting exactly the kind of oppression critiqued as hipster racism. Some consumers see his
appropriation and ironic representation of internet memes
along with his sarcasm as humor within the context of
their worldview, because they understand and are ultimately
entertained by what is, to them, Daniel Toshs obvious subversion and play with the signifiers. So these audience
members are able to laugh along with the program and the

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Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies XX(X)

4
silliness of the memes Tosh presents. However, Tosh.0
doesnt require the audience to understand the content as
irony and sarcasm to find humor in the show. Many people
can also participate as audience members laughing at the
victims in the content rather than the irony, and this is
exactly the social problem. The program operates in two
time zones: The present postmodern media context in which
audience members consider society to have gotten past
issues of race, gender, class, ableism, and so on, thus freeing the signifiers to be consumed as ironic representations
of a time gone by, and a 20th-century modernist temporal
context which revives an audience that laughs at images of
the other with an attitude of bigotry, superiority, and
prejudice.
A second specific kind of problem arises in the immortality of incorrect information with no proportionally corrective counter. There is no way to delete false information
from the internet once it has spread. More than a decade
after the 9/11 tragedy, there are still high-ranking American
politicians who claim the terrorist attackers made their way
to the United States through Canada, even though evidence
published by investigative bodies demonstrated that not
even one of the hijackers had a Canadian connection.4
A third phenomenon effected by internet memes with
tragic physical world consequences is the trial of individuals by internet and internet-inspired vigilantism, mirroring
the same flawed logic and processes of medieval witchhunting mobs. For example,
. . . the Victoria Times Colonist wrote about Garnet Ford, a
man who was wrongly accused of murdering Jamie Kehoe on
a bus in Surrey. The accusation didnt come from the police; it
came from anonymous messages on Fords Facebook page.
After Kehoes murder and the anonymous message, Garnet
Ford started receiving death threats and derogatory messages
on Facebook accusing him of being Jamies murderer. Ford
was horrified. He was innocent, but the damage was done. His
boss forced him to take time off work, making it impossible to
financially support his family, including a 4-year-old son and
another baby on the way. The story created such a stir that the
local homicide unit held a press conference emphasizing
Garnet Ford was never a suspect. (Janson, 2012)

More recently, the hacktivist group Anonymous made

headlines when they doxed (posted the real identity) someone who they said was the tormentor responsible for the
teen Amanda Todds suicide in British Columbia, Canada.
However, they widely distributed personal information that
fingered the wrong person. Murakami Wood (Davison,
2012 ) observed that the absence of individual and organizational accountability that facilitates hacktivism in the first
place is also its greatest negative aspect, as there is no sense
of responsibility associated with the act of destroying someones life. I would also add that neither is there a method of
corrective action that can adequately address and compensate

individuals for incorrect doxing and other mistakes made

on such a scale.
In spite of these shortcomings, Armchair activism,
(aka media slactivism) has become the extent of many
peoples political involvement, believing they are doing
something to change the world by simply forwarding information to their already existing electronic friendship network without any depth of dialogue about the topic. The
Koney 2012 campaign is an example of exactly this kind of
belief in a fantasy of remote political proxy, in which an
audience member might believe their act of mass distributing information in their virtual world stands in for political
involvement and intervention in the physical world.
Produced by an organization called Invisible Children
(2012), Koney 2012 has attracted more than 110 million
views since its release in early March of 2012. The ease of
sharing something many viewers thought was meaningful
information about a demented warlord and his enslavement
of child soldiers in Uganda caused it to become a viral sensation within just a few days of its initial release. However,
many of the claims, the strategy advocated in the video, and
the organization itself did not maintain integrity once a few
people began to look beyond the video. Among many other
issues, the Ugandan government pointed out that the warlord in question had been driven out of Uganda years before
the video was made. Ugandan citizens expressed frustration
that in addition to numerous factual errors, the video ignored
the voices of the Black child victims and glorified the White
filmmakers. And the Invisible Children organization itself
was found to have dubious accounting practices, raising
millions of dollars in the name of charitable direct services,
while in fact spending most of their budget on salaries,
travel, and film production. Meanwhile, a YouTube video
made by Ugandan Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi to
directly counter false information from the Koney 2012
video has received less than 100,000 views. While
Mbabazis video succeeded to some extent in creating a
small counter-meme (as evidenced by the numerous clarification videos and reposts one can find online), its critical
mass is far less than what would be needed (presumably
over 100M views and/or mentions) to effectively counter
the misunderstandings the original video continues to create
in popular discourse.
Of course, whats happening now isnt unexpected. As
mentioned in the introduction, Godwin warned us about this
phenomenon long ago. And its not all bad. Many good
things have come about as a result of these same phenomena, such as the revelation of a video by the Anonymous
collective in which Ohio high school students joked about
raping an unconscious girl that led to the conviction of two
rapists (see Bennett-Smith, 2013). With every new media
invention comes wave of changes, both good and bad. This
is just the latest in a long history of media and social change,
but this scale of disproportion was not possible in this

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Kien
present media era. Going forward, if we are to ensure what
we consider the good outweighs the the bad in the cultural change processfor example, in the way that print
media insinuated democracy into Western political values
we must navigate this new globally networked mediascape
with our eyes open and our theoretical minds engaged. That
is to say, we must acknowledge and address the reality that
phenomena such as hipster racism is still experienced as
racism in our everyday world, that it not only affronts
People of Color but also creates circumstantial opportunities to participate in overt bigotry, and that it is an undesirable media effect of our culture.
Now that we have a good understanding of the media
environment and the phenomenon of internet memes, I will
turn to some theoretical explanations of what makes memes
such a unique classification of content. The following
review of several canonical communication theories reveals
how people are using internet memes in ways that depart
from previous forms of media, and highlights several new
theoretical issues that must be understood to advance our
critical understanding of this phenomenon.
The first theoretical model I will use is Katz and
Lazarsfelds (1955) famous Two Step Flow model. In this
theory, information acquired through media goes first
through individuals (opinion leaders) who pay close attention to particular issues, the mass media and its messages.
They then pass on their own interpretations in addition to
the actual media content in face-to-face interactions with
other people, acting as opinion leaders. The opinion leaders
in any group may change according to who is perceived to
have the most legitimate knowledge of an issue. This
emphasizes a social process that takes place in the interpretive phase of communication, and media effects are considered weak, delayed, and enacted over longer periods of
time. In other words, there is little if anything that can be
identified as a direct/immediate effect. However, memes in
some ways defy the conclusions of this theory.
In the broadcast model that the Two-Step Flow theory
was designed for, the transmission of information was seen
as a one-way process. However, when something goes viral,
every person who decides to repost is a mass media mogul.
There is no clear ending point for internet memes in the
traditional sense. Rather, prosumers en mass in the network
will very quickly mass reproduce the meme and its mutations until its signification value to them as individuals has
been exhausted. So with internet memes, media effects can
easily be potentially strong and fast, though still indirect. In
this context, every prosumer behaves like an opinion
leader, broadcasting their own reinterpretation of the content in a nonlinear fashion, which creates an exponentially
increasing swell until it peaks. However, the face-to-face
conversational element is not required online, and the opinion leadership happens both asynchronously and almost
instantly through the simple act of reposting or forwarding.

These unique characteristics of internet memes mean their

effects have unknown potential. Unlike traditional media
content, it can be very difficult to divine if and when and for
how long a meme will be effective, how high it will spike at
its peak, how sustained it will prove to be, or even if it might
be revived again at a later time.
The second seminal theory I will apply here is Stuart
Halls (2003) Discursive Model of Communication. Halls
work elaborated some of the ideas presented in the two-step
flow theory, but introduced a strong emphasis on the interpretive process of the audience members. Ive used Halls
terms hegemonic and oppositional above in the analysis of possible interpretations of ironically coded content,
meaning that one might understand and agree with the message, or understand but disagree with the message. Halls
third important interpretive term, negotiated, may seem
conspicuously absent from the conversation up to this point,
and that is no accident. This is because there is little room
for negotiated interpretations of memes, given the speed
and hyper-mediated nature of reception and redistribution.
Rather than the linearity of the encoding/decoding process,
memes seem subject to something more like reception/
immediate recoding. Like a surprised bystander being
tossed a hot potato, the origin of the information source
doesnt matter as much as its immediate usefulness as a
recodable free-floating signifier that can be almost instantaneously tossed to the next recipient (only in this analogy the
potato would exponentially reproduce itself in mid air and
land in the surprised hands of all the senders social network
friends at the same time, who would then juggle it in exactly
the same way). In something like a virtual version of Laws
(1986) immutable mobile, once set in motion, the content
becomes slightly inflected by everyone that retouches it
along the way, though the information of the original message remains at the heart of the meme. Thus, Halls theory
would, in effect, see the overlap each production/reception
cycle until there was no one new left to send it to down the
chain of rebroadcasting (see Appendix C).
My third area of theoretical analysis applies medium
theory. This school of thinking assumes that media appliances influence society and civilization on a more fundamental level than the informational content they mediate,
by introducing changes in the way society is organized, the
way we go about our everyday lives, and how we see the
world. Hence, McLuhans (1964) famous statement that
the medium is the message. According to Innis (1986,
1999), civilizational change is reflected in battles between
competing media, and the rise of a new medium brings with
it a change in political order as the knowledge system and
political economy of a civilization is reorganized around the
new dominating form of information storage and retrieval.
To take McLuhans statement at face value, the primary
medium through which memes are propagated is the hybrid
global network. If hybrid global network is the message,

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Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies XX(X)

6
then the combination of the words instantaneous, ubiquitous, on-demand, interactive, and always accessible telepresence (seeming to provide access to all time and space)
should make sense to us recipients of the World Wide Webs
message. The intense portability of our networked appliances (i.e., smartphones) has eroded and overlapped previously obvious distinctions between physical and virtual
reality, ensuring we can have virtual experiences almost
anywhere we go in our physical world. Thus, it is possible
to participate in meme propagation even while standing in a
grocery checkout line.5
Another noteworthy aspect when considering the internet
as a medium is a confounding of Innis analytical paradigm
that pits literacy against orality. The real-time facilitation of
networked communication coupled with the interactive nature
of hypermedia imitates the immediacy of oral discussions. The
permanency of data once it is inscribed and backed up in various places online further imitates Innis criteria for orality.
However, the extreme portability and general accessibility of
digital information, along with the globally space-binding
nature of the World Wide Web, reflect characteristics of bookish literary tradition. The result is an oxymoronic literary orality, in which what many consider truth is revealed through
experiences of ironic transgressions, rather than facts or legends. It allows people to feel perfectly fine seeking explanations for profound questions from overtly biased communal
sources, constructed by people with no particular expert
knowledge, but whose mastery of the machines allow their
opinions to rule in virtual space.
Building in large part on Innis concept of orality, James
Careys (1989) Ritual Model accounts for the importance
of continuity and social processes in the use of media, and
the agency of people in acting out what is consumed as
media into everyday physical world rituals. He describes
the main goal of communicating as the creation of a sense
of shared community, in which individuals maintain culture
and a sense of place through ritualization that imbues everyday activities with meaning. When backgrounded by
McLuhans (1995) Global Village concept, we can understand our global network as a virtual space full of ritualized
social activity. Online, people participate in many communities at once, passing content between communities, but
also editing content for each specific representation of self.
There is not one virtual community. Rather, many people
belong to many communities simultaneously, and this
requires a constant effort of identity management that gets
performed by individuals through aesthetic selections.
While in the physical world, we may mark our passing from
one communal space into another with visibly ritualistic
symbolic acts; online, we symbolize our simultaneous virtual presences through ritualistic prosumption of data
appropriate to the various digital spaces one might inhabit,
which can quickly escalate the growth of memes. The process of prosumeristic identification leads me to an analysis
of what is different in about Consumer Culture theory in
this era of memes.

Holt (2010) and the Situationists theorized that in a consumer culture such as ours, people approach consumption
as a never-ending process of producing an aesthetic representation of how they believe they should be seen
spectaclewhich subverts individuals energies toward
selfish consumerist acts rather than the acting out of ethical
deeds as a means of building identity. Everything in ones
world becomes symbolic in nature, open to appropriation
according to ones individual taste, with nothing tethering
the symbol to the truth behind its origin (reputed to have
influenced Baudrillards theorizing of simulacra). Instead
of authenticity and ownership, consumers emphasize the
fleeting appearances of things, celebrate processes of selection (i.e., shopping) as the highest accomplishment, and
emphasize modes of consumption as markers of status.
While in the physical world we can hearken back to an era
in which peoples everyday lives were firmly rooted in their
daily needs, it is much difficult to forge such a direct association between use and exchange value online. In
Baudrillards (1995) description, the method of duplication
in modern culture typically flowed from real physical artifacts that served as models, based on which real physical
copies were made. In our postmodern culture, however, we
typically begin duplication by creating virtual simulations,
then try to make our imaginings manifest as simulacra. In
effect, there is never anything real that sets the signifying
chain in motion. Because of this consumer culture logic,
digital information is perceived by audience members not
as a representation of truth or reality, but as a possible selection that may or may not contribute to the construction of
their personal online spectacle. Thus, a memes success is
directly proportional to its aesthetic usefulness to the multitude of online individuals.
Holt's (2010) concept of detournemont, turning expressions of the capitalist system and its media culture against
itself, also has a special application in virtual consumption. Rather than an intervention into the dominant sign system, detournemont has become an everyday practice in the
construction of peoples various represented identities. It
does nothing to interrupt the power relations of capitalism,
as this process has been successfully commodified and been
assimilated by the capitalist apparatus. This act is extremely
easy to accomplish and quite normalized in digital prosumerism. It reflects an attitude of postmodern cynicism, the
individualist libertarian spirit of inventing oneself, and celebrates manipulation of simulacra as an achievement. In so
doing, as described previously, it presents moments of truth
to flash through the use of irony. However, it doesnt keep
that window open, but rather allows the conditions of
oppression to remain strategically dominant. The everyday
use of detournemont allows for a sense of accomplishment
through armchair activism, achieving a personal expression
of moral and ethical values, without having to act on it
beyond appropriating images.
To return to the main argument in this article, there is an
obvious danger in the way current practices of prosumerism

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Kien
works with information that is not as simple to counter as
Godwins counter-meme tactic suggests. With an emphasis on playful irony, new aesthetics are welcomed for their use
value in self-expression, but symbols are not considered for
their original meaning or effect beyond immediate, very limited circumstances. This leads to a solipsistic, self-referential,
closed, exclusive, and ultimately dysfunctional approach to
community that accepts offending others as a normal part of
everyday experience. Counter-memes can be helpful, but
are ultimately always reactive, and do not go far enough in
correcting viral media mistakes.
The solution is not simple. It ultimately rests with individual ethics, and a personal will to be open to concepts of
truth beyond ones immediate experiences. This must also
be applied consistently between and among the simultaneous communities an individual audience member participates in. It is imperative for individual user to know that
being ironic is an option for the privileged that often plays
with other peoples misfortune, and which is experiences as
a form of oppression for those very people who the prosumer might believe they are helping by spreading information. However, for the spread of information to be an
effective means of combatting oppression, users must seek
to understand and respect the original intended meanings
behind the symbols that become memes, and to be sure that
original meaning is preserved (and/or explained and understood) in the reposting or forwarding of that information.
The goal would be to challenge people beyond ones existing networks with that information, and seek challenges
oneself, rather than maintain solipsistic inward-looking attitudes. Finally, if we are all, in a sense, broadcasters online,
perhaps the time has come that audience members learn and
follow ethical standards for broadcasting.

Appendix B

Source: http://yfrog.com/scaled/landing/619/zv1yes.jpg

Appendix C

Appendix A
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes
1.

2.

Hipster racism was a term invented to describe the attempt

to use racism as ironically and satirically, with an attempt to
legitimate it as humor with the claim that in a post-racial
culture, it is obvious that the racism is intended to be funny
and not harmful (Lim, 2012).
As in Tofflers (1980), description of the prosumer.

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Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies XX(X)

8
3. The hybridity of smartphones has assimilated the wireless
telecom networks into the World Wide Web as well.
4. For example, as late as 2009, former presidential candidate, John McCain, insisted, some of the 9-11 hijackers did come through Canada, as you know. (FoxNews,
2009 see http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/24/
mccain-repeats-false-claim-sept-hijackers-entered-canada/).
5. Such as the 26 Random Acts of Kindness meme that swept
the United States after the tragic massacre at Sandy Hook,
NJ, on December 14, 2012 (see http://www.katiecouric.com/
features/sandy-hook-promise).

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Author Biography
Grant Kien, PhD, is an Associate Professor specializing in New
Digital Media Studies from a Critical Cultural perspective with the
Dept. of Communication at California State University, East Bay.
His research focuses on technography, qualitative approaches to
technology research, globalization, communication and culture,
mobility, and communications networks as performative, symbolic, and interpretive spaces. His current research focuses on
investigating Internet memes as the spatialization of a virtual performative arena, and developing a methodology to document and
analyze such spaces as a participant. Previous books include the
co-edited volume Post-Global Network and Everyday Life (with
Marina Levina, Peter Lang, 2010), the full-length book Global
Technography: Ethnography in the Age of Mobility (Peter Lang,
2009).

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