What are memes? How can we dissect the meaning and function of memes in society? These are the foundational questions Colin and Rock attempt to answer on this premiere episode of Shitposting the Spectacle. They introduce four lenses they will be using to deconstruct memes: memetics (Dawkins), genealogy (Foucault, Nietzsche), semiotics (Barthes), and the spectacle (Debord). Complete with a breakdown of the hallmark This is Fine meme, this episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in STS.

Check out expanded show notes, an image gallery, and additional reading for this episode on our website.

Distracted Boyfriend, Viacom, Facebook, and Suffragettes smoking Lucky Strike: connecting them all is the meme ecosystem, or memecosystem. In this episode of STS, Colin and Rock explore the idea of memes as a medium of commercial, cultural, and political exchange.

God save the Queen, or better yet, God save the Meme. In this episode of STS, Colin and Rock step back from the present’s commercialized memes into the memes of European political powers from the Medieval to the modern. Tracing the Sistine Chapel to Napoleon Crossing the Alps demonstrates that the birth of political power, and its ability to hold onto power in moments of crisis, relies on memes.

Crisis—a catalyst of change in society, thus also in memes. In this episode of STS, Colin and Rock expand on this point from last episode. This continuation focuses on how the responses to world war (Bernays’s public relations, advertising, Dada, and the Situationists) arose to challenge the supremacy and relevance of meme as power in the modern western memecosystem.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history, but for memes, this was only the beginning.

This episode explores how the advanced capitalism of Fukuyama’s “end” invokes memes where existence itself is a crisis and people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump are revived as Napoleon, all while political activists continue to subvert old memetic traditions.

**Warning** This episode covers the topics of suicide and suicide ideation.