fossilesqueAcademic Rizzlers
InfynisMy fiancée and I were talking about this the other day, and the conclusion we reached was that our language, as it always has, is evolving, and these new phrases are just as valid as anything anyone has said before. People don’t want to accept it, because they think of Internet memes as silly, and that’s where a lot of this language comes from (there’s also racism involved, because, of course there is), but it’s too late. That’s what English is now. Sucks to suck, fam.
glimsei’m inclined to side with the initial tweet because I’m not a big fan of memes. I don’t have any data (because I don’t hold this opinion strongly) but it feels like so much more communication today is just references to other things. And I don’t think I believe that memes in academic papers are an “evolution” of the language - I think they’re doing it to get attention.
I’m not saying original statements are inherently better than repeated ones but “meme culture” is just posting the same thing over and over and it feels so…lazy and boring. I really struggle to understand how people enjoy seeing the same joke for the 100th time. As an example, any time a video game or movie introduced a cute animal, you’re guaranteed to see someone oh-so-cleverly add it to the “If anything happens to [name]…” template. Is there really no better way to express that you think an animal is cute? Did you really even want to express it or did you make it for Internet points?
I dunno. I guess I just don’t like the repetition of everything nowadays. It reminds me of a kid I went to school with who could not have a conversation without dropping in several Simpsons quotes…yeah man, I saw the episode and it was funny when Homer said that. It’s not very funny when you say it.
A lot of the language you use is a reference to other things. And language evolves precisely because enough people repeatedly used a word or phrase in a new way. It seems that your main criticism of the use of memes in literature is that they “dont feel right” or that you merely dont like where things are going which isn’t a solid rationale for disallowing them any more than people thinking the use of the word literal figuratively somehow makes the figurative use of the word literal “wrong.”
Really if I had to make my opinion more concise, it isn’t just that it “doesn’t feel right” - it’s that it feels like the word choice was used not to better express their idea but to be flashy and trendy. It’s not that a writer used a pop culture reference, it’s why the writer used it.
I’d have a very similar opinion if the trend was to use wacky typefaces or colors for the title. It serves no purpose other than to catch your eye (hence my clickbait analogy) and I think academia should be held to a higher standard than buzzfeed
Getting the attention of your intended audience is part of communicating effectively. Buzzfeed has the reputation that they do because they embellish and distort the truth and outright lie for entertainment purposes. That is the problem not that they make use of memes to get their intended point across.