This Didn't Go Where I Thought It Was Going
Level 1... and that's okay
Happy Monday. Ever wonder how many people it takes to run a publication like this? Some of the largest and fastest growing publications on this platform are run by a single person. Most Substack publishers are ruthless efficient and it’s impressive.… And then there’s us. Each post requires a minimum of two people - at least one writer and another person dedicated to finding and placing memes.
Don’t worry, as a written publication we’re clear on which to prioritize if push comes to shove. We’ll keep the memes. We thought
, who does most of our writing, would be upset that his position is second to the meme-master. Instead of throwing a fit, he nodded his head in agreement and started the first ever Guardian Academy Substack chat1… and it’s about memes.People. Love. Memes.
Meme: A meme is an idea, behavior, 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. - Wikipedia
I’ve heard many people call posting or sharing memes lazy or suggest that meme culture is proof of our attention spans shortening. That may be true. And it sounds good enough to accept. But if we make sense of something quickly because it sounds good - are we not also being lazy and displaying short attention spans?2
I think the rise of meme culture hints at something else - the single biggest frustration all humans share. I’ll get to that in a moment. First, scroll these memes real quick.
1:
2:
3
If none of those images or gifs stopped your scroll or made sense to you, that’s okay. It was six or seven seconds of your time and can easily be ignored. But if you connected with any of them…
…You get it.
What is “it”? Dunno. Maybe it’s the inside jokes. Maybe it’s one of the lessons buried in the anime that hit you hard. Maybe you’re just happy that someone else you know binges anime, too. But there is something that you understand from the memes above that you could only understand if you were someone like you. Also…
Demon Slayer is a total of 23 hours and 20 minutes of total watch time.
Fullmetal Alchemist is 25 hours and 36 minutes of total watch time.
Attack on Titan is 36 hours and 15 minutes total watch time.
Most people binge watch them all the way through over the course of a few days. People still have the capacity to pay attention to something - if they think it’s worth paying attention to. The most popular TV shows are binged hours at a time, the most popular podcasts are often over three hours long. Attention spans haven’t gone down, the market has been flooded with content and the bar has heightened. To be worthy of attention content must be thought-provoking, entertaining, visually stimulating - and worth talking about.
Come to think of it, to create something thought-provoking, entertaining, visually stimulating, and worth talking about requires an incredible tolerance for tedium. On one end of the meme is the source material. Source material that dozens of people worked long hours to make it thought-provoking, entertaining, visually stimulating - and worth talking about.
In other words, they painstakingly worked on every detail so that they could get your attention and it keep it just to let you know…. “We get you”
On the other end of the meme is the meme creator and all of its sharers. People that share a Fullmetal Alchemist meme have probably each spent 20+ hours immersed in Fullmetal Alchemist. They saw it shared on a message board, timeline or feed and immediately felt a feeling of being understood by someone else. “They get me”. And then they shared it as a beacon to others like them…”We get you”
Sometimes a meme is shareable because it’s a fart, a cat or boobs. Things that people share because the internet was basically made for…well…farts, cats and boobs.
Most of the time a meme is a beacon. “We’ve been through the same 28 hour experience, we have shared language, and inside jokes. We’ve learned some of the same lessons, cheered on and cried over the same things, have some of the same tastes and probably have something to talk about… because we get each other”
…And that. Means. Everything. We’ve all been surrounded by friends and family having conversations we can’t keep up with or have no interest in. We’ve all been in groups of people who look as us like we’re nuts because they have no idea what we’re talking about. We all wonder at times why we feel so out of place. It’s the frustration we all have in common…
…We all feel misunderstood.
An increasingly digital and disconnected world offers more options to connect than ever. As the number of options increases, so does the potential of a wrong turn - more opportunities to be misunderstood and wonder… “what’s wrong with me?”
A meme is like a bat signal shining bright, telling you…”don’t worry, nothing is wrong with you. You fit in. Someone out there understands you.”
When people talk about and share memes, they’re telling us that something is worth the time to get immersed in - for people like them. People looking for somewhere to fit in will see a meme, then go and binge hours of tv or read volumes of books - so they can fit in.
I think the rise in meme culture has more to do with people wanting to fit in - desperately wanting to feel understood - than being lazy or distracted. But that’s just me. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
The Takeaway…
This isn’t really a post about memes. This is a post about how the human condition and how we all feel misunderstood. As the world becomes increasingly digital and disconnected, it gets more difficult to develop deep connections because we can’t even figure out where to put our attention.
Quoting movies, sharing memes, using one-liners and catch phrases are all ways of trying to quickly identify who might understand you, who you might understand and what might be worth your time.
We have ours…
“Raise the floor”
“Live to learn. Give to earn”
“Rocky Road”
“Tap, Tap, Tap”
“DALA”
They’re repeatable and portable, but they aren’t lazy. You’d only know how to use them or what they meant if you’ve been immersed in the source. Using a shared language to identify and quickly inform people of something complex requires more intellectual horsepower than developing a tolerance for tedium does.
A powerful community develops shortcuts to communicate with one another. Meaningful sources are worth creating shortcuts to have meaningful conversation about. It would be lazy not to. It doesn’t have to be memes, but I think it’s worth developing and sharing shortcuts to find your people. It doesn’t have to be here, but wherever your people are… engage with and have fun with them.
If you have strong opinions about memes, you can download the Substack app and jump in the meme chat below. We’re all exploring the app and the chat feature together. I have no idea what to expect.
Note: I had no idea where this post was going - a rant about memes certainly wasn’t on the radar. But alas, here we are.
Oh…And Here’s Some More Stuff
The team has been building like crazy preparing for some of the stuff we’re rolling out later this year. It might not be a bad idea to click around and go down some rabbit holes. Most likely, the rabbit holes have changed from the last time you poked around.
The Corner Update
At least once a month, Dr. Jeff Spencer will fire up a video and answer the questions in the comments in the monthly corner update. If you have questions for or what to share your experience with Dr. Jeff… The corner update for April is below.
The Substack strategy
For readers interested in Substack strategy or Substack in general, we posted the Substack strategy on the Marketing publication. There will be monthly updates here on publication growth and how we’re applying Guardian Academy principles. Anything beyond that will likely be posted over the Marketing publication so that readers that aren’t interested in the growth stuff aren’t bombarded with emails.
Commandment 1
The Guardian Academy’s first commandment is: The Healthy Man Has 1000 Wants, The Sick Man Has Only One. Commandment One is a newsletter about health, wellness and looking good naked. We helped kickstart and structure it, the contributions will be primarily from fitness and health professionals. We’re excited to read it.
Growing Trees: Great writing about writing great
By day, Joseph writes amazing Guardian Academy Newsletters and articles. By night, he shares the process of writing them on his own publication, Growing Trees. It’s great writing about writing great. While he doesn’t post often, it’s always a pleasure when he does.
What’s Next
We’re going to be testing out the chat feature. The tentative plan is to create threads for TGA+ members to have fun, got to know each other and share memes - but we will see how it goes. The balance we are trying to strike on the inter webs is an interesting one.
The in-person events are a fantastic mix of “get stuff done” and “have a great time”. It’s a very natural thing to sit down, solve a problem together, tell jokes before, during and after ….and then grab a drink and laugh together. The people that jive with you tag along for the ride, the ones that don’t… don’t. In person events are natural - great place to hang.
The Arena is a little trickier. Being hosted on zoom tends to cultivate a laid back, productive, enjoyable atmosphere. It’s quite as natural as in-person meetings, but the members on zoom make it a great place to hang.
TGA+ is the the trickiest. The asynchronous structure of TGA+ has tremendous benefits: you can participate any time you want, timezones don’t matter, there is no urgency to respond, each post becomes a living and improving document - it’s a powerful structure. Its pros are also cons…everyone is moving at their pace and in their own context at the time. Perhaps adding a live chat as a place to hangout in realtime is a worthwhile TGA+ benefit.
We’ll find out. TGA+, Guardian and Arena members, what do you think? Oh, and if you wanna see or share bunch of memes, check out the new chat feature.
Live to learn. Give to Earn.
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