Endless Thread - MEMES, Part 11: I've Heard This Before

Episode Date: December 9, 2021

In this episode, we cross-examine memes and their relevance, and look at a surprising hypothesis that draws a through-line from TikTok to much farther back in history –- all the way to the very beginning of human culture. Ultimately, we investigate why memes are such an obsession right now, and whether we should think about them in a completely new way.

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm going to close my computer. Okay. Is that a good idea? Because you're on, aren't we calling, talking to each other on Slack, on Zoom? Do we lose Amory? Oh, Amory. Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. Amory Severson. Benjamin, Barackaman, Johnsonman. That's my current mood.

All right. This will work. Okay. You ready? Yeah. Darmac and Jalad at Tanagra. Oh, I can't work with that, unfortunately. Tell me more.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. Nothing? I got nothing. All right. You're not alone in your confusion because once upon a time, the Starfleet crew of the Enterprise were also bewildered, Amory, in a classic Star Trek episode called Darmak. Oh.

Darmock. Rye and Jiri at Lunga, falls fell. Well, I actually didn't see Darmok for the first time on TV. I saw it as part of a linguistic anthropology class. I was taking in college. This is Madeline Vasily. She is a freelance editor in Minnesota. She is a Darmuk fan.

Basically, the premise of the episode is that Picard and the Enterprise crew encounter the civilization that completely baffles their universal translator. Okay, Emery, we have talked about this, right? A little bit? Yes. Yes, we have. Okay. And you immediately went and watched the episode, I know, several times.

Nope. So in the episode, Captain Picard, aka Patrick Stewart, is on a video call, like a Zoom call between ships, with this alien civilization, the Tamarians. Only he can't understand what they are saying. Mr. Dayton. The Tamarian seems to be stating the proper names of individuals and locations. Yes, but what does it all mean? So in this kind of high-stakes effort to make a genuine connection between the enter, and this Tamarian civilization, Captain Picard ends up getting kind of kidnapped by the Tamarians and beamed down to a planet with the Tamarian captain.

And Picard can't really tell if the Tamarian leader, you know, in this Tet-a-Tet, is wanting to kill him or make friends with him. What now, Captain? You attack me in my sleep? And eventually Picard comes around to communicate with this guy that they're trying to communicate with, because as they eventually figure out, the Tamarians speak in references instead of in literal language. That's how you communicate, isn't it? By citing example. By metaphor. So, Sukhet, his eyes uncovered. Yes, I've been awoken. So when Madeline saw this Star Trek episode in her linguistics class,

she thought it was cool. But more like, huh, that's interesting, cool. And then in 2018, she goes to a copy editor's conference. Also very cool. Oh, yeah. So I decided to stop into a session on constructed languages. by an editor named C. Chapman. And she basically spent an hour talking about how we can go about creating fictional languages.

During the Q&A, someone brought up Darmuk in the Tamarian language. Everyone else in the audience sort of made this like, oh, yeah, like familiar noise. Because chances are if you're at a conference attending a presentation about conlangs, you're probably a bit of a nerd. and you've probably seen Darmak. Con Langs, as in constructed languages. Oh. I just thought that was like another Star Trek term coming in. Anyway, this led to a giant nerd debate, of course, about the Tamarian language.

And then this one guy stands up and he says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm a linguist. The Tamarian way of speaking references. It's not a great example of a constructed language. because... Language doesn't work that way, but memes sure do. Memes. Tamarian is a language of memes, right? Madeline said the room was suddenly overcome with a collective epiphany.

Like, wow, did Star Trek really predict memes? I think the reason it made sense is because so often when I see memes used online, they're not used as part of a conversation necessarily. They're used almost in place of a conversation. So instead of someone using a meme in addition to something that they're saying, they're communicating their response entirely through the meme. And so in that way, saying that memes were like Darmok, it just sort of made natural sense to me.

This is brilliant. Yeah. When did this episode come out? 1991. Get out of here. So for today's episode, the final endless thread meme season episode. we're going to maybe where no person has gone before to challenge everything we've been learning in our season

and explode the definition of memes like we're hitting it with pulse cannons from the Starship Enterprise. You ready? Battle stations? I don't know Star Trek. I'm sorry. But I'm ready. Yes. Let's go. To infinity. Nope, wrong reference.

Close enough. I'll take it. All right. Do you want to let everyone know how much you know about what we're talking about today? You've referred to it as the mystery episode this whole time that we've been working on this season. Well, so there are reasons we kept this a secret from you. And I think one of the biggest reasons is that I have this theory that I don't think you're going to like. Okay.

Can you give me the most primordial forms of culture? Writing? Okay. Spoken language. Okay, getting closer. Something that comes out of one's mouth. Yeah, sure, yeah. Like singing?

Yeah. Music. One of the first forms of culture, I feel like, is music, right? And my crazy theory is that all music from the beginning of time to right now, is just infinite meming. Okay. Okay, you're open. I like it.

Yeah, the idea of thinking of it as memetic is new to my brain, but the standard, you know, nothing is original. Everything is based on something else. There is referencing something else. That's not new to me. Okay, that's our show, everyone. Take care. All right, so I'm going to explain this

the skeptical listeners out there. We should do a refresher for anyone out there who may have missed our previous nine episodes. We should define meme. Can you define memes? I hope so. I would say if I've learned anything at all, that a meme is a unit of culture or a unit of cultural information in the same way that a gene is a unit of genetic information. And as that unit of cultural information passes from person to person or is shared from person to person, it evolves in some way. It changes in some way. That's good. So we started with Darmic, but now on to our next chapter, which has in a way a similar

name, TikTok. I love talking about TikTok, yeah. TikTok Talk? TikTok Talk. On the clock. So we haven't talked that much about TikTok in our meme series, but it's, can you explain How would you explain TikTok? TikTok is a social media platform that is primarily videos that people are sharing.

And to me, TikTok is where you go to get weird. It's where you go to show how weird human beings are. And I really appreciate that about it. Yeah, me too. And I think also TikTok as a platform is kind of built for meming. And music is a big part of the meming on TikTok. and that's because all TikTok videos with music have links at the bottom that lead to that music. So if I want to use it, all I do is click, use this sound, and I've got the backing track for my next different referential TikTok.

As far as I'm aware, it's one of the only platforms that has ever existed that really does this. So this is Ryan Broderick. And because of this feature, audio is extremely malleable. So there's lots of remixes. There's lots of screwing with sound and playing with sound and taking different sounds and combining them. So Ryan writes the internet culture newsletter Garbage Day. He knows memes big time because in Garbage Day he is often logging them and explaining them as they appear and get popular online. And one example he gave is of this artist Bella Porch, who recently released this song called Bill the Bitch.

It's a really weird vibe And it doesn't really make sense on its own But it also doesn't need to make sense on its own Because it's got like lyrics that are perfect for lip syncinging to It has like little bass hits that you can cut your video to very clearly That's kind of all you need now So Bella Porsche designed her song to be used on TikTok Right?

She set out to make meme music in a way Um Take my song, lip sync, change it up, do whatever But maybe the clearest example of how TikTok is built for musical meming is... She had not been two weeks from shore when down on her. So Shanty Talk or C Shanty is a meme. It starts with Nathan Evans, the Scottish mailman in his mid-20s. He's an aspiring musician.

And in the final week of 2020, he's really feeling these weird pandemic life vibes. So he posts a TikTok of himself singing, an old sea shanty. I can be the weatherman come to bring a sugar and tea and rum. One day when it's where the weatherman come. I can't believe that was the end of 2020. I know.

It feels like 20 years ago. Yeah. So he doesn't expect much of a response, right? He just kind of like does this thing. He posts it. And everyone starts doing their own sea shanties. It blows up in part because of this TikTok feature called duets. And it's a pretty cool idea. It's like a quote, tweet or a re-blog, but a video version. So if I like your video, I can take your video, duet with it, and then add myself to your video or add your video inside my video. And people can get really creative with this. They can add like layers and layers and layers of videos. I've seen some absolutely wild ones that are virtually impossible to describe in audio only because they are just, they're really incredible.

Yep. I love it. I love TikTok. I love. the freedom that it gives people to to get creative. And I think the the duetting feature is brilliant. And, uh, yeah, I'm all in. All right.

I love it. Yeah. I love that you love it. All right. So, so we've reached this point, um, with TikTok and other platforms,

um, music and video memes. They, they kind of are starting to maybe outshine static memes in some cases. See shanties, um, or songs, but they're also memes,

music as meme. But I know I proposed something bigger, like this idea that all music, the entire library of music from ancient drums and flutes to Lil Mazax is all a meme. And we'll get there after the break. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers.

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Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org. slash creative studio. Okay, so Amory, if I had to guess, I know you make beautiful music, and I've heard it, and it is truly beautiful, but I don't think you,

do you do samples? Do you use samples in your music making? I don't. No, the close. closest I've come is taking recordings that I've made on my phone and mixing those into some of my tracks. Yeah, but that's not sampling someone else's work necessarily. But it is kind of repurposing something that was made for a totally different reason. Yeah. And incorporating it in. That's really cool. That's cool that you do that. And I think it's relevant to this part of the

conversation. So I called up this other guy, Jason O'Brien, and he teaches at the Abbey, Road Institute in London. Clearly Beatles focused in many ways, but Jason teaches young musicians all about music and the technological advances we have created in making that music. The first sampler, really, that was commercially sort of available and successful was an instrument called the Chamberlain. It's named after its inventor, Harry Chamberlain, who wondered if he could make a keyboard play pre-recorded flute sounds and match the pitches with the keys. So he devised an instrument that had a tape loop under every key, which would play a recording of the appropriate note on the real instrument. So that instrument developed into the melitron,

which was a more famous instrument, which was used on the beginning of Strawberry Fields Forever, providing the flute intro to that song. Oh, of course. Classic. So at the beginning, like back in the day, sampling really meant hooking a recording up with a keyboard, right? So the keys would trigger the recording. And if you think about that, you're cutting a piece of sound, right? And then you're pasting it and you're remixing it. Is this sounding familiar? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm still with you. All right. It's close. I almost lost it. No, I guess, yeah. Okay. I'm here. Okay. So then, of course, sampling evolves, right, as a musical art form. Instead of making strange keyboard music from a single flute note, people start using more complex samples. Things like Rappers Delight by the Sugar Hill Gang, which sampled Good Times by Sheik in the early 80s, the baseline.

Can you sing it better than me? Yeah, so the bass line goes, boom, boom, boom, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like that. If there was, if we made one of those video podcasts, there would be so many little, you'd see so many little shoulder shimmies coming from me right now. Good. Yeah. Uh-huh. All right. So then sampling evolves again, right?

Instead of using a single drum fill or bass line, people start making music entirely comprised of samples. And so one of the first examples, De La Sol's three feet high and rising. There's also the Beastie Boys album, Paul's Boutique, which you probably have heard of. Mm-hmm. that album for me was it was a real eye-opener as to what was possible with samplers because up to that point they'd provided an element of a song rather than the entire basis of all the music on an album which which is what it was it's a it's a kind of masterpiece in the art of sampling really that record so that album feature samples like sligh and the

family stone and what that what that album does as well is it doesn't only just it doesn't only loop one idea and repeat it, it goes from idea to idea at kind of rapid pace. So it's kind of constantly changing. The drums are changing. The musical loops are changing. I guess it's like the Mona Lisa of sampling, if you like. So I don't know what, I mean, Mona Lisa of sampling is, that's a pretty intense statement. But, but let's soak this in for a minute, right? Samples are literal cultural units that are being spread and remixed and re-contextextual. materialized within other music here, right? Yeah, and if those cultural units are made up of all of the cultural units that came before it that allowed that information or work of art to be created, then we're in a sense like sampling on sampling on sampling on sampling on sampling exponentially.

You're smoking what I'm rolling, Amory. You're smoking what I'm rolling. So, all right. So let me ask you this. As a music player, are you an ear person? Like, do you learn songs by ear? I'd say more by ear than by music, yeah. What's the earliest song you can remember kind of earing out? Probably something by the Beatles, you know, probably like the interlude in my life, the piano interlude, which actually was played much slower and then was sped up in the recording that you hear. but I wanted to learn it and learn it at the tempo that's on the recording.

And that I remember learning by ear. All right. Well, I asked some other cool people this question. The first song I clearly remember doing that with Four, How, Where was around. Those are all of them, right? Yeah. No, physical by Olivia Newton-John. Let's get physical.

I mimicked her tonality. Her range and her that soft kind of up there tonality. I remember that one very clearly. I'm sure there were others before that. But I think that that was kind of definitely my first one. So this, Amory, is Reggie Watts, who has, like, a lot of influences, which he learned from by mimicry. People like Olivia Newton John, Ray Charles, the Fat Boys. And then Michael Winslow from the Police Academy movies, he blew me away.

way because he wasn't a beatboxer. It wasn't really a beatboxer. He does do beatbox stuff, but he's more like a mimic. He's more like a world machine, humans, culture mimic guy. I tried to walk across the street to the driver's license bureau. You know, and then I was like, well, because I was always, you know, obviously when you play as kids and you know, Star Wars was big back then for me. So, you know, you'd be playing, you know, like all these sounds and stuff.

as a kid anyways, but then like you had Michael Winslow had like that super high level, you know, mimicry. And I was like, oh, shit, this is, whoa, this is crazy. Yeah. Like, how does he do this? And then, you know, and then I just started practicing when I would hear things like machines. I would try to get the right sound, the resonance of it,

like the friction of like a gear coming to a halt, all that stuff. So, Amory, you know Reggie Watts. Do you know of Reggie Watts? He's the band leader of some, is it a late night show band or something? Is that why his name? James Corden. James Corden. Okay, yes.

Yeah, yeah. And he's like an amazing musician and comedian. And, you know, this all sort of makes sense if you listen to Reggie Watts. Like, it's not the traditional throwdown a beat for a rap thing, right? It is music unto itself. It pours out of him. It is based on the things he hears musical or not. Yeah, I mean, I still do it today.

You know, I'm just like walking around going, and just like walking around doing my thing. And sometimes I don't even notice I'm doing it. The other thing worth saying here is that like you, Emery, he's not really like an extremely online kind of person, Reggie Watts. He's not a TikTok god, if you will. Are you meme aware? Are you a meme?

Are you a meme lord? A meme lord. So to me, this made Reggie the perfect person to propose this theory to. And I guess I just wonder what you think about that as an idea that, that like a lot of music is like essentially assembled cultural units that are sort of like, you know, arguably referential to other work consciously or unconsciously. Yeah. I mean, you know, I guess like Thundercats, blood on the, blood on the dance floor? What was that?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Nobody booed that. Yeah. When I heard that I was like, I'm so confused right now because that, like, I know that drumbeat, but that's like, I keep hearing footsteps, baby, in the nine. Oh, in the night.

That song is, that's the. beat, you know, bitty-kib-b-d-k-k-k-k-you-know. So, you know, there's like tons and tons and tons of quotes that are used all the time in music. And even in that example, there's a middle step between footsteps in the dark by the Isley Brothers released in 1977 and Thundercat's 2017 album, which Shirley Reggie knows as well, the 1993 song by Ice Cube, a good day. This stuff is genre and music culture agnostic.

Here's something that I really liked recently. It's from a video of Dave Grohl talking with Farrell about recording Nirvana's Nevermind. I pulled so much stuff from the Gap Band and Cameo and Tony Thompson on every one of those songs. All that. Wow. That's old disco. Wow. That's all it is.

So Reggie also mentioned Doja Cat, this L.A. rapper who has this one song, Kiss Me More. There's basically a moment that sounds like at the end of the chorus. And it's basically Gwen Stefani. Hollaback Girl mixed with two other songs, which are just like. It's its own song. It's not like me going like, oh, it totally ripped off. No, of course.

It's not that at all. And the mixture of, it just makes this beautiful, amazing, hooky line that makes you feel good in ways that are just beyond the immediate form of what it is. So in a way,

music is kind of like one of the original memes, I mean, meme generators, because, you know, you hear these quotes, or you hear a texture, or you hear a rhythm,

or you hear a register. There's so many, it's a multi-dimensional equation that's happening and when you hear it it makes you feel all these different ways um differently so we're we're kind of talking about this idea that like music is built on something and that something had to come before and whether it's music theory or a musical influence um just focus on influence for a second right like Ryan the guy spoke with about TikTok he and I were talking about Lil Nas X. And Ryan mentioned that Lil Nas X doesn't actually have a clear genre.

He doesn't really have a specific sound, but he was a Barb. He was a Nicki Minaj stand. And so his music, it sounds a lot like what a Nicki Minaj stand would make music sound. You know, that's what it sounds like. And so let's follow that idea down the rabbit hole because Lil Nas X loves Nikki Minaj. Nikki Minaj has said that the singer Monica is one of her greatest musical influences. So Monica was a big fan of Whitney Houston, who loved Aretha Franklin. And Aretha's central influence was Clara Ward.

And Clara listened to Queen C. Anderson. Queen C came from gospel, gospel from blues, blues from slave work songs, which had rhythms based on African drum beats, which, I mean, Africa is where humans began. The point being, like, with internet memes, you can trace the origins of a single piece of music all the way back as far as the documentation exists. This is so fun. This is so fun. And it's also... I'm so glad.

Yeah, it's so fun and, you know, great job. And I think while this is so fun, it also is kind of like... nothing um nothing matters it's all just cultural reference well kind of yeah you know like i don't know i'd say it's equal parts exciting and also kind of like but is anything original then does anything does anything matter will i ever make something original and and why is that even important to me does that matter maybe maybe it doesn't matter because we're just here to exist Right? I don't know. No, that's right, though.

I think that's right. And I think that, you know, we've talked about in this season, we've talked about context collapse, right? In this idea that, like, you know, for a lot of people, memes, they come from a specific place. And the person, like, consuming that meme, like, understands that. And it's like, oh, yeah, this is from the office or whatever. But, like, over time, the ones that survive the longest are the ones where you don't actually need to understand anything necessarily. necessarily about the original to understand the meaning

of the latest iteration, right? Yeah, and you know what? This is where... This is why, and as you know, my appreciation for memes has increased over the course of the series and over the process of making the series. From zero to...

Eh, we're getting there. But one thing I do really appreciate, anytime you're talking about culture in general, is that culture is about a feeling. To me, it's so left brain. It's so like, just stop thinking about what it is or how it came to be and doesn't make you feel something. And by presenting me with a musical example, you have done something

great for me, which is that memes and all culture are about a feeling. And that will always be more important to me than knowing something or not is just feeling. something. Recognize this? Yeah, let's don't stop believing by Journey and the cast of Believe. Yeah, there's a few more songs in the same chords. Check it out. My life is brilliant.

My love is pure. I saw an angel. All right. Well, thank you for playing along and listening. And thanks to all the endless thread listeners who have been listening to our meme series and for going on this weird wild ride with us. I'm a meme. You're a meme.

Everywhere a meme meme. Everywhere a meme meme. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. Want early tickets to events, swag, bonus content, photos of Amory's, snowshoes, or my cross-country ski boots. Join our email list. You can find it at wbUR.org slash endless thread. Also, we want to know what you think is the most underrated meme.

Call us. Yes. pick up the telephone [phone]. Or you can record a voice memo on your smartphone and email it to endless thread at wbUR.org. And we just might feature your voice memo or your suggestion on the show.

For example? Hey, this is Holden from Las Vegas, Nevada. I think the single most underrated meme is the coffin dance meme, which is the pal-bears from Donna. I mean, yes, it's kind of tragic, but you see them dancing,

holding up a coffin. It's just something that's, like, very upbeat, very fun, and it's kind of just a fun way that we kind of handle grief. That's my two cents for them. This episode was produced by Dean Russell, Ben Brock Johnson, and Frank Hernandez. Our series and our show is made by producers Nora Sachs, Dean Russell, and Quincy Walters.

We are co-hosted by us, Amory Severson? And Ben Brock Johnson. Listen, this episode was edited by Maureen McMurray. Mix and sound design by Matt Reed. Wicca, wika! Also, check out the songs you heard in this episode, including the one you just heard, four chords by Axis of Awesome,

at our website, WBUR.org slash endless thread. Really? Wicah, wiki, is your best, that's your best record scratch? Is that the best one you can muster? Hey, the spirit moved me. Would you like to do a better one right now? Let's hear it. Yep, eb, epe, epe, epe, epe, epe, e, e, e, e, e, e, e.

Sounds like you're malfunctioning. Special thanks to you. An additional production work from Josh Crane, Frank Hernandez, Kristen Torres, Sophie Codner, and Rachel Carlson. Endless thread is a show about the blurred lines between digital communities and the crumbs. You misspelled crumbs, but... Typing on my phone. And the crumbs of the sad cake you baked to celebrate the end of a pandemic that isn't over. Thank you. I keep hearing people saying, like, now that the pandemic's over.

Now that the pandemic's over. It's not people. All right, if you've got an untold history and unsolved mystery or a wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up. Email endless thread at wbUR.org. And send us a picture of that sad cake. Yeah, send us some crumbs. We're a couple of crumbums. All right, that's enough.