Re: <nettime> Google's Weapons of Mass Destruction

[Amy Alexander <plagiari@plagiarist.org>]

i understand how it can be annoying if the same joke arrives in one's 
inbox repeatedly, but i think we shouldn't overlook the power of a meme as 
a form of political resistance.  i've received this one from people who 
don't  usually seem to question the war; it seems to be hitting a 
nerve beyond the "preaching to the converted" crowd.

the meme is quickly moving beyond email circles into mainstream media - 
reuters et al are now reporting it... search now for weapons of mass 
destruction... 
http://news.google.com/news?q=weapons+of+mass+destruction

as to whether the redundant forwarding is a symptom of info- or 
cyber-dependency: 
the interesting thing is that each time someone forwards it, it means that 
the sender has just received the message for the first time - in most 
cases, the people who receive something like this repeatedly are 
cyber-veterans with large cyber-social-networks, whereas the senders are 
not very entrenched in cyberculture (otherwise, they'd realize it was 
redundant and not send it.) 

so, whatever one's feelings on the dark humor, this seems to be something 
that a lot of people from outside the usual net-active and 
politically-active circles are hooking into.  there's a lot of social 
discomfort in the states about anti-war discussions since one can be 
shunned by one's peers as a traitor. so memes and dark humor can be 
icebreakers for a lot of people to start discussing these issues, and 
that really needs to happen... 

-@


On Fri, 4 Jul 2003, Bill Spornitz wrote:

> Co-Info-Dependents;
> 
> I have enjoyed the e-rhythm washing ashore as this little info-fluff 
> has arrived in my inbox about twice a day since it first came out on 
> metafilter, or slashdot, or al-jazeera, or whatever, about 6 days ago.
 <...>


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