MEMEING AGAINST MAINSTREAM. AN ANALYSIS OF DANK MEMES AND THE PICTORIAL (COUNTER-)PRACTICES OF MEME CULTURE

Internet memes are now part of mainstream media culture. On social media, each day memes are created, consumed, and shared by millions of people. Advertising agencies create their own memes to promote brands and products. However, memes are also integral to subcultures on 4chan, Reddit, and Tumblr, where most memes originate from. These subcultures battle the mainstreamization of memes to protect the independent media making practice of memeing from outsiders, who they call ‘normies.’ Their weapon of choice are so-called ‘dank memes,’ which are self-reflexive internet memes that criticize mainstream memes and memeing. This critique is a form of visual vernacular criticism, which is highly understudied, especially in regard to digital metapictures such as dank memes. The question this paper wants to answer is: how are dank memes made and employed to reclaim the independent media making practice of memeing from mainstream and marketing culture? The focus lies on specific pictorial practices that counteract the popularization and commercialization of internet memes. To explore these counter-practices, the paper proposes a methodology that combines media philosophy with practice theory to stress that digital metapictures themselves such as dank memes hold knowledge about the media practices that mainstream memes are made of, and about how to counteract them. To explore this media knowledge, examples of the meta-meme $2 are closely examined in the context of the subreddit r/dankmemes. The conducted picture practice analysis suggests that dank memes oppose image macros, while being criticized themselves as mere shibboleths to meme culture.

Imagologies: media philosophy

The title of this book (also referred to in the antetext as "book") is given in several variants of imagologies media philosophy. It has been regularized at the head of this review to a conventional title format, thus betraying on the part of the reviewer a linear-mindedness probably inimical to the open pluralistic presentational intentions of the authors. But that is all right: each reader will necessarily generate an individual meaning of this stylish book /counter-book by dint of sustained scrutiny of its elaborately graphic deconstruction.

Imagologies: media philosophy

The title of this book (also referred to in the antetext as "book") is given in several variants of imagologies media philosophy. It has been regularized at the head of this review to a conventional title format, thus betraying on the part of the reviewer a linear-mindedness probably inimical to the open pluralistic presentational intentions of the authors. But that is all right: each reader will necessarily generate an individual meaning of this stylish book /counter-book by dint of sustained scrutiny of its elaborately graphic deconstruction.

A Liar’s Epistemology

This methodologically important essay aims to trace a genealogical account of Herbert Simon’s media philosophy and to contest the histories of artificial intelligence that overlook the organizational capacities of computational models. As Simon’s work demonstrates, humans’ subjection to large-scale organizations and divisions of labor is at the heart of artificial intelligence. As such, questions of procedures are key to understanding the power assumed by institutions wielding artificial intelligence. Most media-historical accounts of the development of contemporary artificial intelligence stem from the work of Warren S. McCulloch and Walter Pitts, especially the 1943 essay “A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity.” Yet Simon’s revenge is perhaps that reinforcement learning systems adopt his prescriptive approach to algorithmic procedures. Computer scientists criticized Simon for the performative nature of his artificially intelligent systems, mainly for his positivism, but he defended his positivism based on his belief that symbolic computation could stand in for any reality and in fact shape that reality. Simon was not looking to actually re-create human intelligence; he was using coercion, bad faith, and fraud as tactical weapons in the reordering of human decision-making. Artificial intelligence was the perfect medium for his explorations.

The Transcendental and the Agonistic: A Media Philosophy Perspective

This critical response to Dominic Smith’s ‘Taking Exception: Philosophy of Technology as a Multidimensional Problem Space’ begins by outlining the key contributions of his essay, namely his insightful approach to the transcendental, on the one hand, and his introduction of the topological problem space as an image for thought, on the other. The response then suggests ways of furthering this approach by addressing potential reservations about determinism. The response concludes by suggesting a way out of these questions of determinism by thinking the transcendental in concert with the agonistic.

The Technics of Prehension: On the Photography of Nicolas Baier

Chapter 6 offers a philosophical interpretation of Nicolas Baier’s experimental digital photography. Approaching Baier’s work through Alfred North Whitehead’s concept of “prehension,” Bernard Stiegler’s account of “the default of origin,” and C.S. Peirce’s concept of the index, I theorize the retentional exactitude of his digital transformations of physical objects. The chapter intervenes in debates in media philosophy while offering a reading of Baier’s work that is both poetic and conceptually rigorous. The chapter concludes by positioning my reading in relation to Bachelard’s theory of the “transmutation of epistemological values.”

Heideggers Philosophie der Medialität

This book does not claim to etch into relief a media philosophy from Heidegger's thinking in addition to the various philosophies of language, technology, art or science already extant. Rather, its claim is a fundamental one: to show that this thinking – even if this is admittedly not immediately apparent on the surface of its terminology – is itself a philosophy of mediality, establishing its own approach to media philosophy. Setting out from an interpretation of being as mediality, the author first undertakes a comprehensive reconstruction of Heidegger's philosophy in order to subsequently relate it to basic questions of media philosophy and the anthropology of technology. The result is not only a fresh view that questions established modes of reception and lends Heidegger's thinking a new, unexpected plausibility, but in particular a theoretical basis for a critical examination of the media-technological dispositives and dynamics of the 21st century.

Medien und Wahrheit

This volume discusses media ethics perspectives on truth in the context of digitalisation, while also addressing loss of trust and interpretations of the truth in public communication. It develops theoretical classifications of ‘fake news’ and disinformation from both a sociological and a media philosophy perspective. Empirical investigations and case studies on manipulation focus on image editing and communication strategies in political debates. Moreover, the book presents problems and solutions in relation to disinformation from a journalistic perspective. The volume concludes by examining normative challenges posed by online communication in the context of both machine learning and on Twitter and YouTube. With contributions by Sybille Krämer, Simone Dietz, Günter Bentele, Charles M. Ess, Ingrid Stapf, Nikil Mukerji, Tilman Bechthold-Hengelhaupt, Christian Filk, Jan-Hinnerk Freytag, Christian Schicha, Olaf Hoffjann, Natalie Ryba, Ole Kelm, Marco Dohle, Saskia Sell, Bernd Oswald, Tobias Eberwein, Tanjev Schultz, Thomas Zeilinger, Markus Kaiser, Hektor Haarkötter, Christian Riess, Lisa Schwaiger, Mark Eisenegger and Michael Litschka.

Nowa filozofia mediów w Niemczech

This article is about the philosophy of media developed in Germany as early as at the end of the 20th century. It was appeared as the Medienphilosophie – media philosophy – due to a coincidence of two different events that happened in social theory and practice – it’s when the end of certain period in German philosophy coincided then with the beginning of cyber civilization. The understanding of the latter situation demands the creation of a new language – a new analytical and critical apparatus capable of grasping reality becoming more and more medialized. The problem is not so much a question of particular media, but mediality itself. The reconstruction of the philosophy in question does not consist of the presentation of the views expressed by all its authors. It is less about substantive findings of this philosophy and more about its meta-theoretical aspects – the ontological and epistemological assumptions, conceptual apparatus, modes of justification. This text consists of five parts. The first two ones present origins and contexts of the development of the Medienphilosophie. The following two parts are concerned with the identity of media philosophy – its metatheoretical characteristics contained in the writings of two prominent figures – Frank Hartmann and Sybille Krämer. The last part is devoted to the specificity of the scientific and philosophical discipline after the so-called media turn.