Carlos hadn’t been to a circus in years – not since he was little. But there had been a raffle at work and Carlos had won a coupon for a free ticket. He kinda hoped that his brother and/or his dad were in town so he could invite them to go with him.
Carlos made his way to the ticket office that was set up, standing in the line with his coupon as he looked at everything around him. Some things were different than what he remembered or imagined a circus to be like, but not everything could be a dated cliche trope he supposed.
Once at the ticket office he smiled and offered the coupon. “Hey… this any good?” he asked in a joking manner.
“Okay,
I’m a little confused but whatever.. You wanna learn more about me, go
ahead I’m not going anywhere anytime soon..” The acrobat smiled warmly,
he still couldn’t quite figure out why Carlos thought he killed people.
It was probably just a human thing.
“Alright,” Carlos said. “Are you okay if I ask you a few questions? Like, about your background that can help me learn more about vampires? You’re the first one I’ve seen and though I know about them in theory, I’d like to dispel any inaccuracies that I’ve heard right away.”
Right away it was like being in an interview, he sat up straight and brushed his hair back behind his pointed ears, a chuckle between his lips as he crossed his ankles. “Well, what do you wanna know?” He began, an eager expression painted over his face.
“Well, let’s start with the beginning, I guess. You said earlier, up until you were like 20, you were normal. Do you want to expand on that for me?” Carlos was busy closing up samples and after pulling off his gloves he reached for his tablet and opened the document app to start taking notes.
((mun likes it but I never knew what it was called. Yes, my brain is still kinda stuck in high school mentality when it comes to techno/synthetic/wave/computer-made music
2. you know, we have fun here, with the word “meme,” but according to meme theory, which is an actual thing pioneered by reptilian human impersonator Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, most of what we call memes are very unsuccessful memes. A meme, in the scientific sense – if one is generously disposed to consider memetics a science on any particular day – is an idea that acts like a gene. That is, it seeks to replicate itself, as many times as possible, and as faithfully as possible.
That second part is important. A gene which is not faithful in its replication mutates, sometimes rapidly, sometimes wildly. The result might be cancer or a virus or (very very very rarely) a viable evolutionary step forward, but whatever the case, it is no longer the original gene. That gene no longer exists. It could not successfully reproduce itself.
The memes we pass around on the internet are, in general, very short lived and rapidly mutating. It’s rare for any meme to survive for more than a year: in almost all cases, they appear, spread rapidly, spawn a thousand short-lived variations, and then are swiftly forgotten. They’re not funny anymore, or interesting anymore. They no longer serve any function, and so they’re left behind, a mental evolutionary dead end.
This rendition of Freddie Mercury’s immortal opera Bohemian Rhapsody is about the most goddamned amazing demonstration of a successful meme I’ve ever seen. This song is 42 years old, as of 2017. FORTY TWO YEARS OLD. And it has spread SO far, and replicated itself across the minds of millions of people SO faithfully, that a gathering of 65,000 more or less random people, with nothing in common except that they all really like it when Billie Joe Armstrong does the thing with the guitar, can reproduce it perfectly. IN PERFECT TIME. THEY KNOW THE EXACT LENGTH OF EVERY BRIDGE. THEY EVEN GET THE NONSENSE WORDS RIGHT. THEY DIVIDE THEMSELVES UP IN ORDER TO SING THE COUNTER-CHORUS.
“Yeah, Pyrrhic, lots of people know this song.”
Listen, you glassy-eyed ninny: our species’ ability to coherently pass along not just genetic information, but memetic information as well, is the reason we’re the dominant species on this planet. Language is a meme. Civilization is a collection of memes. Lots of animals can learn, but we may be the only animal that latches onto ephemera – information that doesn’t reflect any concrete reality, information with little to no immediate practical application – and then joyfully, willfully, unrelentingly repeats it and teaches it to others. Look at how wild this crowd is, because they’re singing the same song! It doesn’t DO anything. It’s not even why they showed up here today! If you sent out a letter to those same 65,000 people that said, “Please show up in this field on this day in order to sing Bohemian Rhapsody,” very few of them would have showed up. But I would be surprised to meet a single person in that crowd who joined in the singing who doesn’t remember this moment as the most amazing part of a concert they paid hundreds of dollars to see.
And they’re just sharing an idea. It’s stunning and ridiculous. Something about how our brains work make us go, “Hey!! Hey everybody!! I found this idea! It’s good! I like it! I’m going to repeat it! Do you know it too?? Repeat it with me! Let’s get EVERYBODY to know it and repeat it and then we can all have it together at the same time! It’s a good idea! I’m so excited to repeat it exactly the way I heard it, as loudly as I can, as often as possible!!”
This is how culture happens! This is how countries happen! Sometimes a persistent, infectious idea – a meme – can be dangerous or dark. But our human delight at clutching up good memes like magpies and flapping back to our flock to yell about them to everyone we know is why we as a species bothered to start doing things like “telling stories” and “writing stuff down.”
“That’s a lot of spilled ink for a Queen song, Pyrrhic.”
Man I just fucking love people.
reblogging for the excellent A+ meta and the fact that they were singing the goddamn guitar parts and that’s fantastic
“Don’t worry; I’m already planning on kicking that impostor’s ass after I rescue Max.” Dan reached into his pockets & took out his brass knuckles. “Do you know where they are right now?”
“As
for if he’s a Christian demon, I have no idea. I only found this out
recently & the only info I got was that he was a demon; nothing
specific was said about what type of demon he is.”
“I mean, I’ve dealt with demons before, but I thought I was done with this bullshit. Guess I was wrong…”
“In my experience, dealing with something like this just means that you gain experience, not that it’s done forever. But that’s okay – we know in theory what to do.”
“We’ll just throw whatever we have at him and hope for the best, as realistically that’s what we can do.”
((the tumblr app isn’t compatible with my phone’s OS.
Carlos hadn’t been to a circus in years – not since he was little. But there had been a raffle at work and Carlos had won a coupon for a free ticket. He kinda hoped that his brother and/or his dad were in town so he could invite them to go with him.
Carlos made his way to the ticket office that was set up, standing in the line with his coupon as he looked at everything around him. Some things were different than what he remembered or imagined a circus to be like, but not everything could be a dated cliche trope he supposed.
Once at the ticket office he smiled and offered the coupon. “Hey… this any good?” he asked in a joking manner.
“Okay,
I’m a little confused but whatever.. You wanna learn more about me, go
ahead I’m not going anywhere anytime soon..” The acrobat smiled warmly,
he still couldn’t quite figure out why Carlos thought he killed people.
It was probably just a human thing.
“Alright,” Carlos said. “Are you okay if I ask you a few questions? Like, about your background that can help me learn more about vampires? You’re the first one I’ve seen and though I know about them in theory, I’d like to dispel any inaccuracies that I’ve heard right away.”
The Perfect Scientist 
