BoyintheMachine
Paranormal Maven
For those who still aren't familiar with memes, please read the below link:
Meme - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A meme acts like a virus, meaning it can insert itself into something and then be transmitted to other things, like an infection.
Nothing is immune to memes, even Ufology has succumbed to them. The key thing to note is that most memes in Ufology are wrong, meaning that it's false information that has been added to a particular story or encounter. It doesn't mean that the entire story is wrong. However, the meme itself is usually wrong.
To give an example, one famous meme for UFO crash stories is the claim of an archaeological or geological team of students who stumble upon the crash. This meme has infected numerous UFO crash stories. When it is investigated no evidence of such team can be found. This would indicate that it's a meme and it's false information that has been inserted into the narrative.
Other examples of memes would be the smell of sulpher and red-glowing eyes. Both occur in Ufology and other paranormal fields, everything from UFOs, Bigfoot, ghosts, etc. These things more than likely are memes and are likely to not be real aspects of the story but were inserted later, possibly even by the witnesses themselves. Often witnesses who claim such tend to be religious or take a demonic view of such phenomenon. Another explanation is that people have a preconceived notion of how these encounters are supposed to happen or go down in the back of their head so if they do experience something strange they then insert details they unconsciously believe should be there. The sulphur smell is easily understood to be demonic as sulpher comes from deep within the earth where Hell is supposed to be. The red-glowing eyes meme is interesting because it's almost always red, a color that is associated with evil in our culture.
Again, the presence of memes doesn't mean the entire story is wrong. It's just that we should be aware of memes so that when we read or hear of a story we can easily pick them out and identify them as they are likely to be false or incorrect things that were added to the story.
Can anyone thing of any more popular memes in Ufology?
Meme - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A meme acts like a virus, meaning it can insert itself into something and then be transmitted to other things, like an infection.
Nothing is immune to memes, even Ufology has succumbed to them. The key thing to note is that most memes in Ufology are wrong, meaning that it's false information that has been added to a particular story or encounter. It doesn't mean that the entire story is wrong. However, the meme itself is usually wrong.
To give an example, one famous meme for UFO crash stories is the claim of an archaeological or geological team of students who stumble upon the crash. This meme has infected numerous UFO crash stories. When it is investigated no evidence of such team can be found. This would indicate that it's a meme and it's false information that has been inserted into the narrative.
Other examples of memes would be the smell of sulpher and red-glowing eyes. Both occur in Ufology and other paranormal fields, everything from UFOs, Bigfoot, ghosts, etc. These things more than likely are memes and are likely to not be real aspects of the story but were inserted later, possibly even by the witnesses themselves. Often witnesses who claim such tend to be religious or take a demonic view of such phenomenon. Another explanation is that people have a preconceived notion of how these encounters are supposed to happen or go down in the back of their head so if they do experience something strange they then insert details they unconsciously believe should be there. The sulphur smell is easily understood to be demonic as sulpher comes from deep within the earth where Hell is supposed to be. The red-glowing eyes meme is interesting because it's almost always red, a color that is associated with evil in our culture.
Again, the presence of memes doesn't mean the entire story is wrong. It's just that we should be aware of memes so that when we read or hear of a story we can easily pick them out and identify them as they are likely to be false or incorrect things that were added to the story.
Can anyone thing of any more popular memes in Ufology?
Last edited: