From Aaron Lynch’s Thought Contagion to Seth Godin’s Idea
Virus, the proliferation of interest in media spin-cycles, viral
marketing, corporate memetics and cultural contagions
suggests that the infective model has itself become a craze.
From Aaron Lynch’s Thought Contagion to Seth Godin’s (see
article1) Idea Virus, the proliferation of interest in media
spin-cycles, viral marketing, corporate memetics and cultural
contagions suggests that – in the latest example of non-linear
hype dynamics – the infective model has itself become a
craze. Ccru sent its Cyberhype correspondent Synthia
Drummond (who seems much recovered from her encounter
with Schwartzean ‘hype-gnosis’) to investigate the
phenomenon.
Searching for a preliminary definition of cyberhype crazes,
Synthia arranged an interview with the improbably named Dr.
Ernst P. Demic, Director of Brain Plague Simulation at
London’s prestigious Centre of Cultural Epidemiology, which
has just received a capital injection of Eu500 million to
complete its mapping of the Inhuman Memome.
Dr. Demic argues that in the age of unchained telecommerce,
which he equates with anomalous arrivals out of the virtual,
crazes are spreading catastrophically. He cryptically
describes crazes or runaway polymedia infections as
biomimetic syndromes, functioning as geostrategic operators.
They exhibit an increasing ‘contingency of instantiation’
(whether books, films, games, or ‘trading cards’) and involve
an ineradicable element of chance, which makes them
impossible to predict. These outbreaks work at various scales,
from that of semiotic microparticles (the ‘e-’ prefix, ‘@’, the
suffix ‘.com’) to that of the new economy as a whole.
According to Demic, “in the early nineties the Web was
dismissed as a craze; in the late nineties the same thing
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Dead link
happened with e-commerce. These dismissals are the surest
sign that something is already going hypernova.”
In his forthcoming book Managing the Memome (2000,
Phobos Press, London) Demic explains how economic
circuits pass through thresholds of explosive contagion – or
‘outbreak singularities’. He cites Abstract Machines’ CEO Liz
Volta, who describes the cybernetic volatility of e-business, in
compatible terms: “Up to a point it’s really exciting, then it
becomes frighteningly crazy.”
What is increasingly apparent, Demic continued, is that “there
seems to be an affinity between crazes, infancy and occult
content (as Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness so
disturbingly explored). Both Pokémon and Harry Potter play to
children’s fascination with sorcery and monsters, whilst even
theBlair Witch Project – aimed at an older audience – relies
on the re-animation of childhood terrors for its principal
effects. Increasingly, kids are the cutting edge of this thing,”
he insisted. “It’s bound to upset people.”
Demic draws attention to recent recurrent incidents in South
Carolina, where at his regular ‘Jesus Flamings’ of books,
CDs, DVDs and children’s toys, evangelical wild-man Douglas
Frushlee has insisted, in his now familiar time-stretched
Southern drawl, that “This craziness has to stop.” Frushlee
has promised “to cleanse society of blairwitchery,
potteroccultism, and damned-to-hell pokydemonism. It isn’t a
coincidence that these particular product lines took off so
shockingly,” he mutters darkly; “they’re all aligned with infernal
powers. They have allies.”
Whilst Demic was keen to distance himself from the extremity
of Frushlee’s analysis, he nevertheless seemed to share
some of his cosmic paranoia, as his conclusion illustrates:
“Crazes open doors. And as things stand now, no one can
even imagine what is coming through.”