RAND report to Pentagon suggests Memes Pose a Threat to the US Financial System

Perhaps they're referring to memes like these

Rich people's yacht money when memes ⤵️

lol a meme is literally just an idea.

Free exchange of ideas is the core concept of democracy.

Exactly, and the report uses the term "memetic" to distinguish from its frequent use to mean "image macro". Unfortunately the article headline chose to confuse things.

"Advanced memetic engineering attacks could progressively undermine trust in financial markets and institutions, causing a steady, incremental impact on market stability rather than a sudden breakdown“
RAND Corporation, Technological and Economic Threats to the US Financial System, July 2024

The article body does a good job covering the topic, its a shame they chose such a clumsy headline.
- Image memes were never the only memes in internet lingo, and the original Dawkins term is exactly how they're using it, as the analogue for gene, but with ideas generally. That's all fine.
  
  But that makes their core concept "people might spread ideas we don't like".
- Is this just trying to say 'propaganda' (latin participle for "things that should be disseminated") with fancier words?
Therefore, may I say, the free exchange of ideas poses a threat to the US financial system. May I add "It always was".
Would you say that memes(in the sense of ideas with memetic properties that allow it to spread virally with great efficiency) such as QAnon or antivax, are they good for a democratic society? How about meme complexes(a collection of memes) like fascism or authoritarian ideologies? Don't get me wrong, exchange of ideas are good, but there are certain memes and ideas that must be argued against and fought, perhaps with our own memes and meme complexes. And if these memes and ideas are made less viable in terms of their ability to spread from the vaccine of counterargument and counter memery, then I say that's good.
- Argued against, absolutely.
  
  It cannot be a democracy if they're prevented from being able to share any ideas, insane or not.

I made enough off my dogecoin to pay off my student loans, and it pleases me that the meme investing crowd actively took billions away from hedge funds.

It sucks having to pay for things like that, but it feels good that they're gone. I only hope one day they all get abolished.

Wow. This guy figured out how to beat the system.........quick! Everybody take financial advice from this guy! We all listen to this one guys stock advice, invest all our life savings, and there's never ever any risk because this guy knows what he's doing!

I mean, it's not like there's any precident set up of people being conned into financial advice, investing heavily and then intentionally crashed by it's designers in order to scam an entire populace. What could POSSIBLY go wrong??? It IS the 20s after all!
- The person you're responding to just said what they did as a relevant example, not that everyone will get the same results or should do the same thing.
I just can't believe it doesn't happen more often. It's like do we all want to make some money? Sure. Do we want to spend an hour a day doing it? not really

Like what is the barrier? We all just need to agree to something.

The fucked thing is we do it normally anyways. We've done it for decades. We all go on our phones and share shaq shaking his shoulders or huac tua jokes. But making ourselves rich, nope too fucking far man.
Lies. No one made anything off of shitcoins

when memes dank, banks sunk

Memes so dank, they'll sink a bank
- Dank jenk bank memes bro.

Can I just say I'm so proud of this comments section

I mean, this is legit. They're saying people use memes to sway public thought and behavior. It's also how fascism has risen and been taken out, we just didn't have the internet and call them memes then.

Behind the Bastards did a good episode on the use of comedy with imagery to bolster or destroy. I couldn't find the exact episode for the life of me though. At least 5 years ago probably.

"Memetics deals with information transfer, specifically cultural information in society. The basic idea is to conflate the exchange of information between people with genetic material, to track the mutation of ideas as they are transmitted from one person to the next in the way you could track viral transmissions and mutations. However, a meme also provides benefits to the carrier if they spread it.

Understanding the true nature of memetic threats is critical to surviving them. You cannot wear a special set of magical goggles made of telekill to protect yourself from a meme. THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING. If you just read those words in your head with a bad Teutonic accent, congratulations on being victim to yet another memetic effect. If you did not know that phrase was an oft-repeated quote from the Simpsons then congratulations; you are now infected with that knowledge and are free to participate in its spread.

A meme perpetuates itself by being beneficial to the carrier to spread to new hosts. You now understand that THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING; you're in on the joke. However, you might have friends who aren't, and don't get it. It benefits you to explain them, because then you both have something new to laugh together about when it gets brought up. This is what makes a meme effective - how much incentive a carrier has to spread it. Unless an anomalous meme's effect is the compulsive urge for the carrier to infect others, there needs to be incentive to spread it."

SCP Foundation

"An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.

Antimemes are real. Think of any piece of information which you wouldn't share with anybody, like passwords, taboos and dirty secrets. Or any piece of information which would be difficult to share even if you tried: complex equations, very boring passages of text, large blocks of random numbers, and dreams…" -SCP Foundation Antiemetics division
Leftists of the world, get together and make some more f***ng propaganda memes already