The Rise Of Meme Magic
How Viral Ideas Possess Markets--And Devour Reality
New to the series? Start with our foundational posts on Hyperreality and the Financial Matrix for essential context, or explore the full Table Of Contents.
Part of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice series. Originally published privately on January 13, 2021. Updated and revised for public release on June 12, 2024, with previously omitted content restored for completeness, edits to improve readability, and enhanced graphics.
Previously, we revealed the emergence of a hyperreal Financial Matrix—a simulation that has taken on a life of its own, untethered from the real-world economy it once aimed to represent. The sudden resurgence of meme stock mania, catalyzed by the cryptic return of “Roaring Kitty”, is a vivid manifestation of this new reality—where a single tweet can instantly conjure or erase billions in value. But the GameStop saga is merely the visible tip of a more profound and insidious iceberg.
As we peel back layers of abstraction, we begin to uncover the true nature of the Matrix—a realm where narratives and images shape not only share prices but the very fabric of our economy and society. From ancient egregores to modern memes, self-replicating ideas are blurring the lines between the real and the unreal, culminating in the first ever globally synchronized asset bubble and a society-wide descent into hyperreality—where the boundaries between truth and fiction become increasingly difficult to discern.
Digital Brooms Unleash Hyperreality
In the previous installment, we introduced the concept of the Financial Matrix and explored how financial tools and innovations have taken on a life of their own, reminscent of Mickey’s enchanted broom in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. These tools—ostensibly designed to improve our lives—have instead unleashed forces that wreak havoc and become increasingly independent of human intervention.
But the issue is actually a far more insidious and fundamental one than merely that of financial tools gone awry—say, trading algorithms precipitating a “flash crash” or subprime mortgage securitizations nearly collapsing the global financial system.
Our real dilemma is that we have codified directly into the very operating system of our society the ancient Sophist Protagoras’ idea that “man is the measure of all things”—interpreted by Plato to mean that objective truth does not exist and that whatever individuals deem to be the truth is true. It is not uncommon now to hear echoes of Protagoras in every-day society as Oprah et al. cheer on others for “speaking their own truths” (as contrasted with any sort of shared objective truth or reality).
If the human perspective alone becomes the sole arbiter of “truth” or “reality”, then in the hyperreal Matrix, our ideas have become Sorcerer’s Apprentices onto themselves. Our ideas—now mediated through and extended by humans’ virtual agents and computer programs—have become self-replicating entities, conjuring up endless processions of ideas and symbols and programs of their own.
As they metastasize, they begin to erode the once-familiar landscape of human understanding, meaning, and truth—a relentless tide engulfing the shores of our collective unconscious, superseding all other forms of understanding and ultimately subsuming reality itself into a hyperreal whirlwind.
In this wilderness of meaning, we find ourselves adrift, unmoored from the certainties that once grounded our existence. The traditional signposts—the historical symbols, stories, and truths that once anchored our shared understanding of reality—are increasingly drowned out by the ceaseless torrent of information and algorithmically mediated and generated “meaning”.
The very concept of truth has become a will-o’-the-wisp, buffeted by the winds of digital change and molded by the recursive interplay of humans and their digital doppelgangers. The once solid ground of objective reality has given way to a kaleidoscopic mélange of competing “narratives”, symbols, and algorithms—each vying for dominance in the collective psyche.
Transforming Truth: The New Architect of Reality
Throughout history, humans have discovered, rather than created, the fundamental laws of nature. While we have always manipulated our environment to achieve our goals, we have done so within the constraints of these natural laws.
Yes, mankind’s relationship with technology has been consistently fraught with ambivalence. This age-old tension is vividly captured in the mythological stories of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun with his wax wings, and Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods to give to humanity. The Jewish folktale of the Golem—a clay figure brought to life to protect the community—also reflects this deep-seated unease with the power of creation.
Beyond the realm of storytelling, this apprehension has spilled over into real-world conflicts, such as the Luddite movement of the Industrial Revolution, in which workers violently resisted the introduction of machines that threatened their livelihoods.
Works like Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1797) and its predecessor Lucian of Samosata’s Lover Of Lies (c. 170s AD), Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Forster’s The Machine Stops (1909), and Lang’s Metropolis (1927) demonstrated an early understanding that technology isn’t merely the product of human ideas—it actively reshapes both human belief systems and the material world in which it is applied. These enduring narratives and historical events underscore the ongoing struggle to reconcile the transformative potential of technology with the fear of its unintended consequences.
The past decade, however, has seen a profound shift in the historical relationship between man and technology, as new technologies have catalyzed radical change while operating on the substrate of our “modern” monetary system. Whatever theory or “truth” man is able to envision becomes temporarily “real” in the context of the hyperreal medium that we have created for ourselves.
Like Neo in the Matrix, we now possess the power to conjure “truth” and alter reality with our very thoughts.
Egregores: Collective Thought Entities
We have crossed the threshold into the realm of “egregores” —a concept originated by 19th century occultists. An egregore is an autonomous psychic entity that is created by the collective thoughts, beliefs, and emotions of a group of people.
It takes on a life of its own, influencing the thoughts and actions of its creators and attracting new followers to its cause. When enough people focus their intentions and energies on a specific idea or entity, it can take on a quasi-independent existence in the collective consciousness—becoming a self-perpetuating force shaping the beliefs, perceptions, and actions of those who engage with it.
From Egregores To Memes
In the modern era, the concept of egregores has been reincarnated as “memes” and “mind viruses”—self-propagating ideas that spread and mutate through the collective consciousness, rewiring our perceptions and reshaping the contours of culture itself. Like egregores, memes are thought to have a life of their own, evolving and adapting as they move through human minds and social networks:
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that becomes a fad and spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, [etc.]…memes [are] cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.
Memes Make Markets
Yes, humans have always created and been influenced by memes, whether in the form of Bell Bottoms, Dutch tulips, beanie babies, or Salem Witch trials: man is after all a social animal and such a response seems wired into our very nature.
One need only thumb through Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Keynes’ 1936 description of the stock market as a “beauty contest”, or Soros’ 1987 “theory of reflexivity”—which even then described the market in nearly post-modern, hyperreal terms—to understand that the concept of financial memes is hardly ground-breaking.
Market participants have always tended to spread their views about the future in the form of memes and to learn by absorbing the memes of others: memes compete, winners emerge by displacing competitors, and these victorious memes shape market prices (and reality itself) until either the facts confirm their victory or until they are discredited by the facts and replaced by new memes.
Speculative bubbles—where investors bid up assets because other investors are doing the same thing—have nearly always been a memetic process indicative of monetary-induced hyperreality (i.e., the process usually begins with monetary debasement and spreads via memes).
The Matrix Manifested
But what is occurring now is without historical precedent. The GameStop saga and the resurgence of meme stock mania are not isolated incidents but rather symptoms of a deeper shift in our reality—one that increasingly resembles The Matrix, and in some ways, mirrors even more closely its philosophical predecessor, the 1992 cyberpunk novel, Snow Crash.
Up next, we’ll explore how Snow Crash anticipated a world in which memes and narratives take on a life of their own—shaping both virtual and physical realities—to better understand the power of memetic warfare in our increasingly hyperreal world.
Your writing is beautiful insightful and always makes me want to learn more. Thanks for what you do