The One Line Meme Bomb is like memetics in haiku form. One tries to refine down an idea until it’s as dense and provocative as possible. They often end up somewhere in between an adage and a non sequitur. A good one line meme bomb provokes a change, charge, or ripple in the person who thinks about it. Perhaps it’s the straw that makes the camel say “I’ve had enough!”, quit his job, and become a butterfly on fire. Or perhaps it’s something you scrawl on bathroom walls with a sharpie. Or shout it from a moving car. Or get it tattooed to your balls.
The One Line Meme Bomb database was coded by Triple Zero, a dashing Discordian hypersultan from the Netherlands. It aggregates input from Spags Like You, ranking them by popularity. This exercise was developed at The Pee Dee Forums, where there are well over 200 pages of these things, with discussion.
If you’re curious, a few people have talked about their goals for one line meme bombs, here. There’s also a few poorly organized “best of” lists here.
To this day, neither Ho Chih Zen himself nor any other Discordian apostle knows for sure who is or is not involved in any phase of Operation Mindfuck or what activities they are or are not engaged in as part of that project. Thus, the outsider is immediately trapped in a double-bind: the only safe assumption is that anything a Discordian does is somehow related to OM, but, since this leads directly to paranoia, this is not a “safe” assumption after all, and the “risky” hypothesis that whatever the Discordians are doing is harmless may be “safer” in the long run, perhaps. Every aspect of OM follows, or accentuates, this double-bind.
We found it was challenging to come up with 101 amusing things without resorting to “101 ways to appear mentally unstable”, or “101 ways to make everybody avoid you forever”.
By now, you’ve probably already flipped out about the corporate personhood debate. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court ruled that compromising the electoral process by stuffing it full of dolla dolla bills is a form of expression, and that corporations (whose ability to fuck up America eclipses the action potential of any individual citizen) are protected under the first amendment.
Don’t get me wrong, I think free speech is the bee’s knees. I may disagree with every idiotic thing you spags say, but I’ll defend to my death your right to say it. That being said, do corporations deserve these rights too?
If they were human beings, I’d totally be defending their right to spend their resources compromising political interests. But they’re not people. They’re constructs, collaborative fictions which we created. They don’t get to vote. They can’t serve in the military. We can’t put them in jail when they break the law. They’re not people, I don’t see why they should get the same rights as we mere mortals.
I can’t just sit still while I’m so pissed off. So I made these posters.