The Meme Is The Message

Compliant internet businesses, China expands reach of Yuan, an important video, and more.

The email service provider I use made changes over the past few weeks that severely impacted the deliverability of The Sovereign Individual Weekly.

Open rates dropped by 12%. 🤦 

The good news is that they identified the issues and have reverted the changes. Hopefully that means no more promotional folder or spam purgatory.

Here are the past few editions in case they were sent to your spam box.

Today is once again a focus on digital bohemianism and neo-medievalism, but expands to include that the meme is the message.

I’ll explain in a moment but first as a general note, you should know that I’m going to focus on these topics again and again over the coming months and years because they have become foundational to my worldview. They are central aspects of where I see the world heading over time.

As I watch current events unfold, these themes are the lenses I use to analyze what’s happening.

A quick reminder on key definitions:

  • digital bohemianism: the idea that people are using the internet to express themselves in new & different ways, to share unique ideas, and connect with like-minded communities. As we embrace new ideas and unique lifestyles via the internet we create many new subcultures. This ability to embrace new ways of life is transforming the way people live and interact with each other and their local communities. ie: the digital age is a bohemian age.

  • neo-medievalism: Digital bohemianism and the many subcultures created by it place an increasing pressure on society. This pressure leads to social fragmentation and decentralization of power within traditional communities. (it’s hard to agree on rules, policies, and norms when everyone is embracing a different lifestyle) Neo-medievalism is similar in concept to how loyalty to the Church and Feudal Lords created decentralized power structures within Medieval society. You might identify as an American but have loyalties split between a bunch of different & global ideological communities. Digital Bohemianism thrives because the internet enables people to defy conventional norms, embrace alternative lifestyles and join new communities. This trend challenges traditional structures and authority, leading to a shift in power dynamics akin to neo-medievalism.

  • meme: “A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme”

So with these definitions in mind, let’s frame this discussion with the idea that a large number of alternative cultures are forming online, individuals have expanded access to freedom of expression, and increasingly we live lifestyles that run contrary to conventional norms. As more subcultures form and exist outside of mainstream culture - they place a growing amount of pressure on society to fragment.

I know this sounds exotic and abstract. What does fragmentation really mean? Where can I see it in society? How will different cultural groups react to it?

Well for starters, the meme is the message and code is law.

Believe it or not, memes and a growing number of crypto communities act as key indicators for identifying major subcultures with growing societal influence.

Yes, crypto is a very important piece of the puzzle.

Where does crypto fit into the mix?

There is more to crypto than a new type of casino and a novel form of gambling. In simpler terms, these digital bohemian subcultures are increasingly expressed through memes and cryptoassets. And at a large enough scale, they signal neo-medievalism.

Step back and think about it, free floating currencies have been a key part of large communities in the post 1971 era. More explicitly, nation-states are communities defined by a common culture that have their own currencies and unique value systems.

Crypto is really not so different when you view it through the lens of digital bohemianism and neo-medievalism. (remember the trend: exponential growth in individualism, subcultures, & the desire to operate them outside of conventional systems)

Essentially, crypto serves as the digital tool that enables subcultures to connect, establish shared principles, encode those principles in software, and represent them through a common token (currency). This is a lot like nation-states except that nation-states encode their common principles via rule of law and issue and enforce currencies by fiat (issued by government decree) rather than software code.

When you compare and contrast these things, you see that the Argentine Peso isn’t too different from the shitcoin with a Ponzi-like supply schedule and a dev team that’s pulling the rug out from under the broader community.

Through this lens, intrinsic value of money becomes a lot less relevant to understanding the relationship and role of memes and crypto in our digital age society.

What is relevant is that these crypto tokens and their associated memes embody the belief systems of their respective subgroups. As more subgroups emerge, it's important to follow them and understand the underlying meme that pushes them to the surface. And it’s equally important to understand how these subgroups govern themselves and whether or not they look to encode those principles via crypto assets.

Does the community have a belief system? Does that belief system have longevity? Are the beliefs simply an expression of anti-establishment ideologies? Or are they earnestly trying to create a new way of life? What percentage of the population "buys into" the idea? And are these subgroups a flash in the pan, will they grow, and how might they mutate?

It’s definitely true that in many instances, crypto subgroup movements are fed by greed and the gamblers mentality. But believe it or not, that can also be informative when taken in context of the world around us. ie: if the common person in a mainstream culture feels the pain of inflation, worries that their deposits are not as safe as they once were, that the government has lost control of the financial situation, or that the establishment elite are sticking it to the common man.

If all these conditions are true and a token named PEPE with a frogman image can grow by $1.5 billion in the span of 2 weeks, you have to view this in the lens of anti-establishment behavior and not simply as gambling. (PEPE isn’t just a token, it’s also an important meme often associated with anti-establishment ideologies). It signals more than gambling. It’s a symbol of a neo-medieval era.

Memes are frequently a manifestation of subgroups but when paired with rapid crypto adoption and the power and reach of social media they can act as a signal for fragmenting culture and the expansion of powerful subgroups.

Why? How? Isn’t it a stretch to think a frog memecoin is a sign of fragmenting society?

Think about it like this - if a "worthless" frog token can grow by $1.5 billion in 2 weeks, what can a more legitimate ideological subculture do in similar timespans?

So what's my point here? The above examples are all subcultural memes that signal a message of “my group is at risk and we must take action”.

In a time of digital bohemianism and neo-medievalism, the meme is the message, crypto signals a willingness to adopt code as subcultural law, and combined, it signals a willingness to step outside mainstream cultural confines. ← This is a fissure that signals neo-medievalism (the breakdown of loyalties between the main group and subgroups).

It’s a signal that shows how society might be changing beneath the surface. Don't ignore these events as momentary fads. Don’t ignore them as simple expressions of idiocy or degenerate behavior.

Look underneath the hood at the cultural changes at play represented by these movements and memes. Then take them in context with other changes taking place around the world. Understand that these memes and the accelerating rate at which they spread have real influence on society. They can cause an impact with surprising speed.

Don’t ignore the importance and similarities of the relationships between emergent subgroups and their crypto assets and the nation-state and their floating currency.

That’s all from me on this topic for now.

Rapid Fire

  • Compliance: Impossible - “It is increasingly clear to me that running a globally compliant Internet business will soon be, if it is not already, impossible in several important domains.”

  • China Takes the Yuan Global to Repel a Weaponized Dollar - “While the US remains the world’s clear financial hegemon, these moves are helping China to carve out a bigger place for itself in the international financial system.”

  • Remote Work has Become a Bargaining Chip - “When workers are concerned about job security, leaders feel safe rolling back remote work policies without much pushback.”

  • This is pretty much a must watch

  • Central Bank Gold Demand Hits Record 1st Quarter, Investments Surge - I can't say that I'm even a little bit of a goldbug. In an apocalypse, I want guns, bullets, food and medicines. In a developed society, I want bitcoin. But this is a huge buy signal for me. Gold has relatively fixed supply and if central banks with unlimited money are competing for possession of it... the price can only go up. This also says a lot about where central banks think the world is heading. ie: away from US led dominance and towards multipolarism. That doesn't mean the US is going away as a powerhouse but it does mean to prepare for interesting and significant changes to the global order of things.

Extras

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