Are they Molotov cocktails of an affective war? No, they're tapeworms that users don't understand the functionality of. Molotov throwers OTOH know the precise function of what's in their hand. The intents of either are inaccessible.
Memes -> AKs (esp. as brandished by Afghans/Nepalese etc)
Tapeworms: too little intentionality. Memes can be enjoyed, admired, zeroed, maintained, in the field. But they don't have to be.
Moreso than analogies, better tools needed (PC with the "autonomy" of memes?)
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almana...
Mimetic thought (Merlin Donald, eg) is an evolutionary phase of behavior that's been segregated from episodic, mythological and analytic. But that neither Girard or Auerbach have made theoretical distinctions in their literary approaches, they're invalid.
Memes are as yet unverifiable units of behavior that may have scientific value. The jury is still out.
-- which I thought was comparable to how a swath of people orientate themselves with respect to (such entities as TV tropes and) memes.
Anyways. Memes are much more alive than mimetics; tapeworms are an adequate metaphor in that sense
So it's imposing a narrative on reality. As we're at a particular threshold in neuroscience where the contents in brains are known to not be about things, that ideas like desire, intent, motivation are seen now as false retrofits from folk psychology, challenging cog-sci, CS and AI as to their entire relationship to intelligence AND we're at the memetic-culture chaos throwing a monkey wrench into the general narrative culture, Thiel's approach is like a last hurrah for coding/value that probably feels like for him a new beginning.