Memetic communication has always been around. It’s a shorthand used by those with a common background. If I said to you “a rose by any other name,” or “that’s just sour grapes” you would understand my meaning in each case because of cultural idiom, or memetic understanding. Even the origins of written language were founded in memetic communication as visual symbols on a wall or page slowly simplified into the alphabets we know today. That said, it used to result from being earned through similar or shared active experiences rather than passive ones. It used to require either the effort of study, engaging in the real world, or conversation with others to acquire memetic context. Today, one merely passively looks at a screen and absorbs content like some sort of seawater sponge. It creates common ground and common “experiences” among people who shouldn’t have them, and the commonality, despite being perilously shallow, leads to the foolish belief that those who are genuinely different are “just like us.” It began with “popular music” and programs on the radio, took a massive rise with the adoption of television, and has reached unprecedented heights as the internet has transformed from a tool for gathering knowledge from wherever in an instant, to rapid fire sharing of low effort content such as singalong videos and homemade “pornography.”