As a collection, the Memetic Fiction Manifestos encourage readers to question their understanding of literature, authorship, and the role of algorithms and machines in the creation and dissemination of cultural products.
“The Memetic Fiction Manifesto” is a conceptual work of AI-generated writing by Juha Raipola. The manifesto consists of the manifesto itself and a number of AI-generated variations of the text, all demonstrating the principles of memetic fiction.
The base text includes an AI-generated introduction, the manifesto written by Raipola, and two AI-generated variations of the manifesto represented on this page.
Moreover, the work features “Variants on a Theme,” an additional collection of AI-generated texts that provide a deeper analysis of the manifesto’s theses by using it as a part of formal and memetic experiments.
All the mutations of the manifesto were generated using the GPT-4 language model on ChatGPT.
Introduction to Memetic Fiction Manifestos: A Journey Through the Viral and Formulaic
The Memetic Fiction Manifestos represent a daring exploration of the viral, formulaic, and self-replicating aspects of contemporary culture, literature, and communication. Comprising three distinct manifestos, each one delves deeper into the mechanics and implications of memetic fiction. The collection challenges conventional notions of authorship, literary technique, and cultural expression, presenting an innovative and groundbreaking perspective on the evolving role of literature and human expression in the digital age.
The first manifesto, “The Uninspired Edition,” serves as a satirical introduction to the concept of memetic fiction, mocking the mundane and repetitive nature of contemporary cultural production. The second, Manifesto 1.0 by Juha Raipola, offers a comprehensive and academic explanation of the principles and goals of memetic fiction. Finally, Manifesto 2.0, “The Meta-Meme,” embodies the very essence of memetic fiction, as it appropriates and transforms its own text in a self-referential and algorithmically generated exploration of the genre.
As a collection, the Memetic Fiction Manifestos encourage readers to question their understanding of literature, authorship, and the role of algorithms and machines in the creation and dissemination of cultural products. They urge us to recognize the patterns and formulas that permeate our communication and to examine how ideas spread and evolve within the digital landscape.
By engaging with these manifestos, readers embark on a thought-provoking journey into the world of memetic fiction, unearthing the transformative power of language and the ways in which it shapes our lives. The Memetic Fiction Manifestos serve as an invitation to reconsider the nature of literature and human expression and to appreciate the innovative potential of this emerging genre.
MEMETIC FICTION MANIFESTO 0.5: The Uninspired Edition
We don’t care about literature. We like the boring, fake, and unoriginal parts of culture.
Welcome to the unremarkable world of Memetic Fiction, where the mundane reigns supreme. Here’s our uncreative rundown:
- We sort of explore human expression and stuff with computers, I guess. We take text from the internet and play with it.
- It’s not really literature, it’s more like looking at the world and playing with words. We mess with how people think about writing.
- We use AI to write things. They help us see patterns in what people say and do online.
- We copy and change stuff. Memetic Fiction is about showing how boring and generic most things are.
- We use AI to look at different ways people communicate. We try to make the AI sound like humans.
- We look at how ideas spread in culture. We want to understand how language shapes what people think.
- We don’t care about being unique or personal. We just want to show how ideas copy and spread.
- We don’t try to be real. We just show how people act online to get attention and sell things.
- We don’t care about literature. We like the boring, fake, and unoriginal parts of culture.
- We don’t believe in being original. We think authors should copy and change things, not explore themselves.
Memetic Fiction takes things from different sources and mixes them together. We don’t care about telling a story or making sense. We just like playing with words and ideas.
MEMETIC FICTION MANIFESTO 1.0
Juha Raipola
We use textual appropriation and AI text generation to explore different kinds of cultural forms and formats and to lay bare their memetic and viral power.
- Memetic fiction is a mode of procedural and conceptual writing that explores the viral and formulaic qualities of human expression, culture, and storytelling by means of computer-generated texts and textual appropriation. It attempts to mimic the logic and mechanisms of the spread of ideas on digital media platforms in fictional form. In the context of memetic fiction, a meme is understood as any cultural pattern, form or rule that goes viral and propagates and evolves through various forms of media and communication.
- Memetic fiction is not primarily a literary style, but a way of understanding and engaging with the contemporary world, its cultural products, and its modes of expression. It challenges traditional notions of authorship, literary technique, and the role of the reader, inviting readers to consider the ways in which we are shaped by the cultural products that surround us.
- Memetic fiction affirms the role of machines in authorship, utilizing AI text generators and other computer-assisted writing methods to approach human culture from a nonhuman viewpoint. It treats the large textual datasets used in AI training as a meme pool or the collective textual unconscious of digital media and embraces the algorithmic pattern-recognition skills of computer systems as a technique of exposing general patterns in our communication and cultural products.
- We see writing as a practice of mimicry and mutation. Memetic fiction exposes and embraces the insipid, hackneyed, unremarkable, banal, clichéd, and generic qualities of texts and illuminates their role in human expression. Its focus is on the acts of recycling, copying, parodying, and remixing of forms and ideas. It harnesses memes, cultural references, and internet culture to reflect on the ways in which formulaic ideas propagate and shape our consciousness through the complex interaction of media platforms, algorithms, and human behavior.
- We use textual appropriation and AI text generation to explore different kinds of cultural forms and formats and to lay bare their memetic and viral power. Our interest is in the culturally recognizable but disembodied “voices” inherent in media texts and the potential of computer-generated texts to mimic them. The forms under scrutiny may include different kinds of persuasive and manipulative media contents such as social media monologues and dialogues, jokes, polarized voices of the culture wars, online memes, blog texts, microblog threads, conspiracy theories, sponsored speech, personal stories of inspiration and conversion, outrage content, clickbaits, reviews, sensationalism, branding, and marketing plans. Memetic fiction follows the propagation and evolution of ideas through different forms and different media.
- With our explicit search for memetic patterns in culture at large, we attempt to provide insight into the ways in which dominant cultural narratives, forms, and biases are transmitted and reinforced through language use.
- The foremost poetic principle of memetic writing is the critical exploration of form and the spread of ideas through different forms. Memetic text is not a venue for artistic self-expression, but a method for investigating the mechanical and self-replicating qualities of both mundane communication and poetic texts.
- We do not partake in the performance of authenticity but try to expose the mechanics through which “the self” is branded, fetishized, marketized and instrumentalized in the contemporary media practices of attention and story economy.
- Memetic fiction does not seek to replicate human experience through literary techniques. For memeticists, “Literature” is nothing more than a formulaic, bourgeois mode of expression based on the idea of authentic self. By contrast, we are interested in the nonhuman, mechanical, viral, algorithmic, banal, profile-based, inauthentic, persuasive, unoriginal, commercial, performative, manipulative, instrumentalized, marketized, generic, and script-like aspects of cultural expression.
- We reject modern, “literary” notions of authorship based on authenticity and originality. Memetic authorship is emergent, co-creative, and profile-based. The name of the author functions primarily as a public media profile, as an assemblage, as a placeholder for certain formal choices, and as a copyright-holder. Authorship is gained through mutative mimicry and appropriation, not through inner self-exploration.
- Memetic fiction defies traditional genre and form limitations by combining elements from non-narrative texts, lists, ads, and other formulaic genres to thematic and narrative patterns. Instead of following the experiential narrative logic of the novel, it mimics the viral spread of memetic material in online spaces. It rejects the notion of a text as a self-contained “work” and highlights the potential mutability and variability of the contents and the role of curation, chance, paratexts, shareability, and algorithms in the interpretation of fragmentary, conflicting, and incomplete pieces of information.
MEMETIC FICTION MANIFESTO 2.0: The Meta-Meme
By transforming its own content, this manifesto embraces the inauthentic and algorithmic aspects of cultural expression.
Memetic Fiction Manifesto 2.0 is a self-replicating, mutating meme that mimics the very principles it promotes. It appropriates its own text, dissecting and transforming its ideas, and embodies the viral nature of contemporary cultural expression.
This meta-manifesto is not just a set of guidelines, but a living example of memetic fiction in action. It subverts conventional manifestos by applying its own tenets to itself, demonstrating the participatory and transformative aspects of memetic fiction.
In this manifesto, the machine becomes an author, taking the original Memetic Fiction Manifesto and reconfiguring it through AI text generation. By reshaping its own text, it challenges the notion of a fixed and linear manifesto, instead offering an ever-evolving, mutating, and self-referential document.
Mimicry and mutation are the driving forces behind this meta-manifesto. By exposing the repetitive, formulaic, and often banal nature of its own text, it underscores the omnipresence of such elements in our culture and communication.
This manifesto appropriates itself, remixes its own ideas, and harnesses internet culture to reflect on how our very understanding of manifestos and creative writing is shaped by the media landscape and algorithms that govern our lives.
By examining its own text as a cultural artifact, the Memetic Fiction Manifesto 2.0 lays bare the inherent viral power of both the original manifesto and the concept of memetic fiction, revealing the disembodied “voices” present in its own self-generated text.
This meta-manifesto highlights the transmission and reinforcement of its own cultural narrative, thereby offering a unique insight into the inner workings of memetic fiction.
The critical exploration of its own form and the spread of its ideas is the core poetic principle of the Memetic Fiction Manifesto 2.0. The text itself is a vehicle for deconstructing the very idea of manifestos and literary self-expression.
By transforming its own content, this manifesto embraces the inauthentic and algorithmic aspects of cultural expression.
Transcending the limitations of genre and form, this meta-manifesto combines elements of its own text, ads, and other formulaic structures to imitate the viral propagation of memetic material in online spaces. It embraces the mutable and variable nature of texts, highlighting the role of curation, chance, paratexts, shareability, and algorithms in interpreting fragmented and conflicting information.
Discover the groundbreaking ideas behind the Memetic Fiction Manifesto with the original document itself. Delve into the revolutionary concepts that challenge conventional literary notions and explore the viral, formulaic, and transformative aspects of contemporary cultural expression. Understand the principles of memetic fiction that inspired this Meta-Meme Manifesto 2.0 and join the conversation about the evolving role of authorship, authenticity, and textuality in today's world. Obtain your copy of the original Memetic Fiction Manifesto now!
Behold the Memetic Fiction Manifesto 2.0: a living, breathing, mutating embodiment of its own principles, an ever-evolving meme that subverts and transforms the very notion of a manifesto.