From the Brain of Dr. Nicki: Meme Oralizing

It’s Memorial Day -- a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving our country. A worthy event for sure. But today I find myself wondering what else in our lives has died or is dying – which lands me in a conversation about the death of delicious speech, which journeys me to the land o’ memes.

Yes, to meme or not to meme, that is the question!

Naturally, as a person over 45, the meme idea has been anathema to me. Or I’m anathema to meme. They say meme lovers believe memes to be the cultural analogues to genes – self-replicating, mutating and responsive to selective pressures. Really? Well, after all the term originated in Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene. So is it the me me of memes that drags on me me?

I suppose the whole business carries the ‘picture is worth a thousand words’ idea, but is that really so? Have we really traveled so far from the loveliness of language that by now we simply prefer cartoons.

Indeed, instant everything carries the current day. Speaking became emails became texts became texts without vowels became no-vowel texts smothered with emojis became instagram became twitter became snapchat. Wait, do I have that order right? Probably not, as I easily become lost in the forest of reduction. I’m nearly convinced that soon we won’t actually speak at all to each other but simply, on our weekly dinner dates with partners, only hold up emoji pictures. As it is, you can see whole tables of people texting to folks who aren’t there.

Maybe as a writer I’m simply being…well…me, me about it all. Wanting people to remember the provocative, evocative, redolent experience lolling around in gorgeous word pictures can be.

In any event, there are deaths to revere and others to bemoan. Today I bow my head for the words that are no longer remembered and the troops that are no longer remembering them.