Cultural additions to the setting

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Unmemes
Unmemes are weird. Most memes have some small part that makes their carriers spread them around. All unmemes are about keeping themselves contained. Regardless, they seem to keep spreading, and they're often still very coherent.

Actually, this might just be a particularly devious spreading strategy for an ordinary meme. There's nothing quite like people being secretive about something to make everyone else want in on it.

The first and second rules of fight club apparently didn't do much to hinder the spread of fight club.

[AlexanderHowl]

I do not believe that unmemes exist. Meme complexes are either endogamous (keeping within a group) or exogamous (spreading across groups) depending on their purpose. For example, many religions and cults are endogamous meme complexes because they forbid or discourage conversion (as are most criminal organizations and secret societies). In fact, endogamous meme complexes are arguably more successful over the long term than exogamous meme complexes because they tend to bury deeply within a group, are highly difficult to displace, and are highly resistant to mutation.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Decorative bioroids could be quite popular as living servants among the wealthy elites of the Sol System, since only the middle class would be so tasteless as to have AI servants. With TL10 biotechnology, you could pay to have a wide variety of sapient servants created and trained to your specifications. In regions where they gain their freedom at the age of 18, wealthy elites could hire their former possessions as proper servants, creating a menagerie of exotic people to delight them.

For example, a properly wealthy individual could order a different type of avian servant each year. One year, they would be rooks, the second year, parrots, the third year, ducks, etc. The fact that each would cost a mint to create and train makes their existence a status symbol, as a household that could not afford to spend tens of millions on a novel crop of bioroid servants to add to their household every year is just not keeping up appearances.

This reminds me of the living toys in Blade Runner.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I do not believe that unmemes exist. ---> In fact, endogamous meme complexes are arguably more successful over the long term than exogamous meme complexes because they tend to bury deeply within a group, are highly difficult to displace, and are highly resistant to mutation.

Didn't you just prove the point?
IOW- aren't unmemes the same as endogamous memes?

[AlexanderHowl]

No, endogenous meme complexes are still transferred by carriers within the group, their carriers just do not spread them out of the group and are highly resistant to replacement. For example, the Druze and Yazidi religions would be examples of endogynous meme complexes, as believers spread their religion to insiders but refuse to spread their religion to outsiders (and have been historically very secretive about their beliefs). Secret societies are another example of endogenous meme complexes, as they do not spread their beliefs to outsiders, only people who have become insiders.

[Astromancer]

In the cases of both the Druze and the Yazidis their refusal to spread/proselytize their faiths were adaptations to Islamic societies that would have destroyed them long ago if they had attempted to spread their faiths.

Similarly, secret societies are often secret either for safety, as in the cases of the Carbonari or the Sons of Liberty, to maintain power, as in the cases of many different secret police organizations, or as a means to be glamourous and recruit outsiders, many American fraternal organizations. These groups were secret for serious pragmatic reasons that either served to spread their memes or protected the existence of their memes.

Memes restrict their spread only to ensure their survival.

[AlexanderHowl]

But the restrictions usually end up being permanent, which is what makes them endogamous meme complexes. Druze and Yazidis do not spread their memes in the safety of liberal democracies because the meme complex forbids conversion. They only spread through reproduction (either adoption or biological).