You discuss "memes" pretty often—how would you describe a meme?
A meme is an idea that spreads through the culture like a virus. The word was invented by the biologist Richard Dawkins, who meant it as analogous to the word "gene": just as genes, through natural selection, replicate themselves as widely as possible, Dawkins saw a possible cultural analogue where these so-called "memes" spread by moving from mind to mind. I do use the word "meme" frequently in the book, because it's become a common word in digital circles to describe contagious online phenomena. But I also coined the word "nanostory" as a substitute, for two reasons: first, to accentuate how narrative, a human need for storytelling, underlies these viral phenomena; and second, to make it clear that these stories spread not so much their own inherent contagiousness (as Dawkins believes about genes and memes) but because of the social pleasure we get in seeking out new stories and then spreading them.
You talk about viral culture psychologically, linguistically, and artistically—yet it seems that a lot of what becomes popular virally doesn't involve a lot of thought. Do you think there's a paradox between the complexity of how we're affected in this viral culture, and the simplicity of how we actually behave?
This is what Marshall McLuhan meant when he famously declared that "the medium is the message"—that as much as we ponder the content that we're sending over new media, often the most important cultural "messages" are in some sense intrinsic to the media themselves. The way a medium lets you say things, and the way it presents those things to readers or viewers, exerts a sort of gravitational pull over what's communicated. When I hypothesize in the book about the psychology and sociology of viral culture, I'm not implying that we're conscious of it; instead, it's like the technology is conspiring with human nature to force our behavior in a certain direction.
In the book, you talk about how these websites and memes can start a conversation among people. Do you think that viral culture has made us more connected?
I think it has allowed us to make more connections, but I worry that at the same time it's made those connections less deep. Think about Facebook, for example: it lets us keep up with more people than we otherwise could, but it makes our relationships more stretched and fragmented, more dependent on tiny bursts of communication—little shared links, photos, notes. It's allowed us to manage huge networks of acquaintances, but I fear that in doing so it spreads us too thin for real friendship. By the same token, in these other realms of expressive endeavor, such as music, writing, politics, etc., I worry that viral culture encourages an attitude of permanent novelty and permanent distraction. I say all this as someone who believes that these technologies are, by and large, a good thing—or at least an exciting and inevitable thing. I wouldn't argue that anyone should throw away their laptop or even drop out of Facebook. But I think we need to be aware of the psychic costs.
How much did your journalistic work affect the way you wrote this book?
As a writer and editor, I'm a big fan of "participatory journalism"—reportage where the journalist becomes part of the story. It was important to me that as I traveled through this world of viral culture, I wouldn't just relate other people's stories but would also roll up my sleeves and get involved in it myself. To me, the experiments aren't just an opportunity for comic relief—they're a way to keep the focus on the experience of living in this new cultural landscape, rather than assuming the outsider position that traditional journalism takes.
Why is this book relevant to the population at large—particularly to people who think that viral culture doesn't affect them?
Most Internet books are written by technologists—people whose primary professional orientation is thinking about new technology and speculating about what impact those technologies will have. That's not me at all. I'm an editor at a literary magazine. And this was a huge motivation for me in writing this book: to describe the state of Internet culture from a perspective that's connected but humanistic at the same time. The Internet is no longer an exotic realm that only technologists can guide us through; it's now an inevitable part of all our lives, affecting not just our online communities and modes of thinking but our offline ones, too. And so I tried to write a book that isn't just about the Internet, but addresses the way new media change the way we see ourselves.
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