we all exist in this world where we can
tweet at somebody or engage with
somebody could even be the president of
the united states and they might react
to us back
social media has thrust us all onto the
head of a pin socially speaking
existentially speaking
even if they're on the other side of the
planet
even if they have a lot more money than
we do we can still interact with them
we can still compete with them on
engagement they're inside of our world
we have a memetic machine in our pocket
where all of these people exist
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so what is medic desire
memetic desire means that we're adopting
another person's desire as our own
usually without even realizing that
we're doing it
so social media has given us millions of
memetic models that we now have to
contend with
some people have went from having 10
memetic models to now having a million
and we haven't quite come to grips as a
culture with what that means for our
mental and emotional health
there are two kinds of memetic models
the first kind
is called an external mediator of desire
these are models that are outside of our
world
whether because they exist in a
different social sphere than we do
there's no possibility of us coming into
contact with them
and certainly not becoming rivals with
them
they're in some sense outside of our
world of desire outside of our world of
competition
now these external models of desire can
be real or they can be fictional
the other kind of model is inside of our
world called internal mediators of
desire
these are people that we do come into
contact with and there is a possibility
of conflict or rivalry with these people
these are people that are in our family
these are people in our workplace these
are people that could even be our
friends
it's easier to compare ourselves to them
these are the kinds of people that we
look to as benchmarks and we're far more
likely to be envious of somebody that we
went to high school with who now has a
great job and a beautiful spouse
than we are to be envious of the richest
person in the world
the danger
with external mediators of desire with
keeping up with people that
are very successful with people that
have modeled a certain kind of lifestyle
is that there's no end to that
process all desire
is a form of transcendence
we desire to go beyond the boundaries to
go just over the mountain to be
the kind of person that we don't feel
that we currently are having positive
models of desire to emulate is a very
good thing it's important to have people
that model
virtues and goodness that we would like
but we have to understand the
limitations of any model
and understanding how the dynamic
between us and our models changes in
that scenario is really really important
it's also important to understand when
somebody is an internal model of desire
to us because in that case we have to
have boundaries
all desire comes from
us feeling like we lack something
and that can bring us into a dangerous
vicious cycle because there will always
be another model to find
we have to choose our models wisely
we also have to know when the model is
inflaming us with a desire for something
that's going to bring real fulfillment
or whether it's going to bring
a dopamine hit or allow us to fantasize
about a life that we'll probably never
have and even if we did have it would
probably make us miserable
all you need to do is go on instagram
and spend five minutes and you see
lifestyles modeled you see vacation
destinations modeled fashions
manners of speech ways of engagement
ways of speaking
political preferences all of these
desires are modeled for us 24 hours a
day billions of them
and we need to understand the memetic
landscape of social media or else we'll
become totally controlled by it
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