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These sorts of things did happen before the internet though. Think of the Cultural Revolution in China started by revolutionary university students.

Mass printed pamphlets was the original meme. The more things change the more they stay the same.

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True. But in the physical world, ideas (or memes, if you will) are bound to people and can only survive, if the carrier survives. The idea of curing headaches with striking your head with a hammer does not spread, because the carrier dies. On the interweb, that connection is no longer there. An idea is independent and can spread without direct human involvement. We are like a tundra species finding itself in a rainforest: completely unprepared, lacking both immunity and the ability to keep up with the environment as it changes.

Susan Blackmore calls this meme the “dangerous meme”

Susan Blackmore. “Dangerous Memes; or, What the Pandorans Let Loose” (Cosmos & Culture p297) https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/607104main_c...

This is why any totalitarian regime bans printed pamphlets.

Uh yea you used to need a license to run a printing press, there’s quite a few that were operated in secret

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