Anonymous vs Scientology
Feb. 10th, 2008 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unbibiumSo the /b/tards are protesting Scientology today. And there are posts all over 4chan's /b/ complaining that they're drawing unwanted media attention to the chans, and are ruining the protest with nonsensical memes, i.e. the inside jokes that /b/tards base a lot of their humor on.
I knew it was futile to expect them to keep memes out of the protests. Why? Because the purpose of a meme, in the classic sense of the word, is not to be funny, it is to spread. And what better place for a meme to spread than in a large public protest? Sure enough, you can see them everywhere in the live video shot in London. In this one, I recognized "DO NOT WANT", a rickroll, and "IT'S A TRAP", and "you just lost the game", though the sound quality makes it hard to hear anything.
This may actually be good news for their cause, because as long as the message about Scientology stays constant and strong, then the ancillary memes will just serve as additional hooks in the minds of passers-by, that all link back to the scientology message. Kind of like when you saw that "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" video, and you kept seeing things you saw in the video later.
But their effectiveness could also be bad news, on the premise that there's no such thing as bad PR, and this whole thing might end up actually promoting Scientology more than anything.
But it's good entertainment, regardless.
I knew it was futile to expect them to keep memes out of the protests. Why? Because the purpose of a meme, in the classic sense of the word, is not to be funny, it is to spread. And what better place for a meme to spread than in a large public protest? Sure enough, you can see them everywhere in the live video shot in London. In this one, I recognized "DO NOT WANT", a rickroll, and "IT'S A TRAP", and "you just lost the game", though the sound quality makes it hard to hear anything.
This may actually be good news for their cause, because as long as the message about Scientology stays constant and strong, then the ancillary memes will just serve as additional hooks in the minds of passers-by, that all link back to the scientology message. Kind of like when you saw that "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" video, and you kept seeing things you saw in the video later.
But their effectiveness could also be bad news, on the premise that there's no such thing as bad PR, and this whole thing might end up actually promoting Scientology more than anything.
But it's good entertainment, regardless.
