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Notes -
Academia vs. racist memes
A new paper in Evolutionary Human Sciences has been making rounds.
Memeing Scientific Racism: The Digital Reframing of Racialist Ideologies – “examines how racialised memes circulating on X revive scientific racism”.
The most intriguing feature of the paper is the way its subject of study is presented. Though the aim is to dissect bigoted memes online with Science, the author deemed it inappropriate to grant her readers direct access to the offending material. The four case-study memes are “presented exclusively through schematic reconstructions created using standard image-editing tools, including limited AI-assisted transformations”, bringing to mind some SCP Foundation containment protocol for high-caliber memetic hazards.
I’m certain that the author believes she is doing genuine research investigating a pressing problem, so that’s the angle I'll consider it from. As far as its scientific value goes, my feelings are mixed. Though the author clearly did a lot of legwork collecting nearly 70 memes, and namedrops things from the Dark Enlightenment and human biodiversity to effective altruism, and genuinely attempts to figure out what makes memes compelling and facilitates their spread, the analysis of the memes seems incomplete.
One of the case studies, a meme that was circulating since 2018, originally features a crude outline of a man drawn in soyjack tradition saying:
The rhetorical thrust, as I see it, is to contrast some of the more shallow sounding supposed benefits of mass migration with its most lurid observed effects.
(In February this year a big account, owned by an actual left winger with real-life clout and bearing a striking resemblance to the meme character made this post:
Which is an interesting case of prophetic hyperstition)
" Ethically modified" version of the meme in the paper turns the man into a simpler, more friendly looking figure changing the text to:
And here's what the author has to say about it:
Though this goes in the right direction, nothing reflects comprehension of the joke, of what the meme tries to convey.
Refraining from including the original memes is a serious self-imposed limitation. She could talk about how the slovenly scribbled caricature serves to dehumanize open border supporters, and a grotesque crime is juxtaposed to a relatively marginal example of benefits of mass migration (which are, of course, countless) as a tool of propaganda.
Though the image of the author frowning and making notes as she browses racist jokes on Twitter brings me joy, this paper appears methodologically limited, and more research into the threat of racist memes online is likely required.
I encountered this on Twitter over the weekend, and, as should have been predictable to almost anyone, it resulted in the "ethically modified schematic reconstructions" themselves birthing new memes. My favorite is probably the article 13 compliant frog, but there are others too that made me laugh. Should be interesting to see how this develops.
On the paper at hand, it's hard to think of a more harsh condemnation of the authors and the journal that published it and possibly the entire field that found this behavior acceptable than this sort of "ethical modification" of memes in a purportedly scientific paper. If it were trade secrets or photos of victims or whatnot, that would be one thing, but this is because a particular grid of pixels was deemed unethical to show other academics for the purpose of scientific research and discussion, due to the idea contents of that grid of pixels. It creates a complete abomination of the idea of scientific inquiry, which requires entertaining ideas and presenting facts as they are. I think the continuing self-discrediting of academia is likely to keep getting worse before it gets better, if ever. AIs performing automated research and producing automated papers gives me hope, but also, I think the same forces that created this abomination are likely to dominate those too. I just hope that automating scientific research and papers will become so cheap and accessible to the layman that it won't be possible to truly censor.
I saw a note on Substack that compared it to a medical journal publishing an article about sexually transmitted diseases but only referring to them as "diseases affecting the naughty bits". It's fundamentally unserious behaviour.
As funny as that comparison is, the reality is certainly far worse than that. Because "ethically modifying" a meme by changing its pixels also fundamentally alters the meme in such a way as not to present the reader with an accurate depiction of the actual thing being purportedly studied, in a way that using nicer-sounding words doesn't. It'd be more like talking about genital herpes while presenting pictures of mosquito bites because pictures of genital herpes is icky, and mosquito bites kinda look similar.
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I mean it's also less accurate and communicates less clearly too. There are plenty of non sexually transmitted diseases that affect the naughty bits too.
The original note was worded more clearly. I specifically mean a journal article which refused to use anatomical terms like "penis" and "vulva" and instead substituted childish euphemisms therefor.
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