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Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

Moth Meme 5

The Aeolian: Despite the absence of an author or distinct subject, this moth meme is still successfully integrated into what has become a non-linear processional of other moth memes. This is particular evident in this example, as the moth subject has usurped what is conventionally considered as a 'useful' phone contact. Obviously the number that has sent the text is not accessible to the moth, and the particular phone (and to that extent, the phone owner and author) that took this screenshot cannot be easily traced. Creative labour and image co-ordination is relinquished rather to a glowy-eyed lepidopteran.

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The Eco-logic of Memes: An Ecomemesis

Timothy Morton's conceptualisation of ecomimesis, as formulated in 'Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics' (2007), proposes that nature writing adopt alternative methods to better disrupt the limiting binary that sees nature as distinct from culture. He proposes six key elements that assist a written text to transcend normative aesthetic dimensions, and envisage the non-human as intrinsically entangled with the human. In considering rendering, the medial, the timbral, the aeolian, tone and the re-mark (see image captions below), Morton proposes a text that positions the reader with an affective closeness to place rather than a conception of authorial intent.

The recent appearance of the 'moth meme' is interesting to consider in respect to Morton's ecomimetic framework. When Richard Dawkins originally conceptualised the "meme" in 1976 it was to express a "small unit of cultural transformation" (Shifman) that replicated in a manner that was analogous to the gene (which in itself warrants a whole other topic of discussion!). Shifman subsequently charts the transmogrification of the meme within the contemporary netizen context, a space in which the meme has come to embody three characteristics. Firstly, the meme shares common characteristics of content, form and/or stance within particular genres (a species-being). Secondly, the meme is created in awareness of other memes (intra-action), and thirdly, is circulated, imitated and transformed by multiple internet users in pluralistic iterations (rhizomatic).

Derived from an original photograph posted by Reddit user No_Reason27, the moth meme riffs on the propensity of moths to be attracted to artificial light (particularly lamps), in apparent defiance of the biological tendency of self-preservation. The moth meme is just the most recent contribution to a genre of memes that Shifman terms 'reaction photoshops', wherein photographs are re-appropriated and re-contextualised with software editing techniques that are intrinsically post-digital. This form of digital editing, that is aggressively opposed to smooth synthesis and combination, reveals the material artifice of the meme's creation and thus is deconstructively "more about the process of meaning-making than about the meaning itself" (Shifman). Shifman terms this shift 'hypersignification', wherein memes and meme-culture cede a particular power in the very act of codification, rather than how the code is manifested in any specific articulation.

The constant dynamism of say, the moth meme, subsequently resists conventional symbolic sacredness in that it refuses to be narrativised in "a shared past," or articulate (as photography does) the arrested moment (Shifman). Rather the meme, in turning to 'mundane' subject matter and themes, encapsulates a story that privileges the present- both in representation and in the brevity of its own reception (a fleeting scroll across an internet page). It follows, therefore, that the meme is intrinsically suited to hybridisation and participatory dissemination; in that differing modes of meme 'reading' and interpretation are not only possible but are actually required for a meme to be particularly shareable in the future. Pelletier-Gagnon highlights the potentiality that this offers for ecological discourse, in that the "rhizomatic stratification of cyberplaces reveals a more nuanced view of meme dynamics, one that takes into account the agency of users [...] not unlike the process of deterritorialisation enacted on places". To this extent, the meme can, and does, assimilate the human with the non-human formats of cyberspace, thus offering a new practicable mode of ecomimesis.

In conclusion, it should be acknowledged that the moth meme still perpetuates a certain anthropocentric notion of human cognitive hierarchy, and the diminished value of moth-lives. This notion is apparent when comedy can be derived from the idea that large numbers of moths continue to universally (it seems) defy a biological norm in order to be paradoxically killed by that which they most 'desire'. However, what the moth meme does productively foster is an intrinsic shared interest and recognition of insects from the perspective of the human. When envisaged beside the ecological practices that formulated its being, the moth meme can guide us to an increasingly practicable - if not almost conventional - visual format of ecomimesis, ecomemesis.

Morton, Timothy. Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics. Harvard University Press, 2007.
Pelletier-Gagnon, Jérémie, and Axel Pérez Trujillo Diniz. ‘Colonizing Pepe: Internet Memes as Cyberplaces’. Space and Culture, June 2018, p. 1206331218776188. SAGE Journals, doi:10.1177/1206331218776188.
Shifman, Limor. ‘The Cultural Logic of Photo-Based Meme Genres’. Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 13, no. 3, Dec. 2014, pp. 340–58. SAGE Journals, doi:10.1177/1470412914546577.
Waddock, Sandra. ‘Narrative, Memes, and the Prospect of Large Systems Change’. Humanistic Management Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, July 2018, pp. 17–45. Springer Link, doi:10.1007/s41463-018-0039-9.

- Bridget