Why I Envy Music Writers As A Meme Writer
And Why I Think Meme Writing Is Going To Get Better
What I’m dubbing this phenomenon.
(Source: Instagram / @heyowenhere)
Last week, I was published on No Bells (an up-and-coming music blog) and my piece was personally exciting to me. It dealt with the symbiotic relationship between rappers and meme pages, the ones that boost underground careers with free promotion via “tapped-in” irony-posting. Finishing the piece felt like a chunk of my life, where two niches (that I’ve been invested in for years) combined and I was able to capitalize on the moment and write something engaging about the meme-to-mainstream pipeline that’s running rampant right now in music.
I’m a rap fanatic (a Soundcloud sleuth) and a No Bells reader (for a little over a year now), but only in the aftermath of my piece’s publication have I started getting jealous because… I don’t think I want to be a music writer.
My spiraling thoughts started when Twitter’s Billdifferen posted a masterclass Brazilian baile list this week, stockpiling 100 niche corners of a foreign scene (a literal foreign scene). He knew town names and neighborhoods and seemed to understand how each DJ grew up, tracing their first word, to their first trauma... linking their lineage to the exact reason why they decided to sample the Uber driver “new passenger pick-up” sound in a song.
His nerdy dedication had me sweating. As I scrolled through each track, a Frankenstein thought pattern formed in my mind, comprised of:
1. “This is awesome.”
2. “This one fucking slaps.”
3. “Does he have a job?”
4. “How much history does he know?”
5. “How did he learn it all?”
Nina Protocol is another publication that I’m in love with. But again, I go on it now and get jealous. I know Dean Blunt, but not all of the Dean Blunt disciples (Dean Blunt brain rot) that led to a Jack Zebra interview being necessary. “Will I ever catch up?” is my inner monologue. And on top of this, “Do I need to catch up (y’know personally)? Can’t I just have other people catch up for me and I’ll be fine?”
The answer is yes. (I’ll be fine.) I like reading all of these music writers’ thoughts and trendspotting. I could catch up if I wanted to (and I’m not half bad, not far behind), but I don’t think I want to be a music writer. Like how Billdifferen breathes favela fumes, I breathe my own fumes, which are memes.
With my job at Know Your Meme, I’m chronically online and getting paid for it. I wouldn’t want it any other way. Even in my free time, I have so-called “good screen time” when it’s time to do my posting, my researching. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I want to be a meme writer. This shit is second nature to me, man.
The problem is that there’s no Nina Protocol for memes, as in, a semi-serious publication with a semi-serious tone that’s writing about hot-to-the-touch trends and creators in a way that’s fully-baked and not too heady (just fun and informative).
Do Not Research used to be a good outlet in this sense, but I’ve sort of turned on them, mostly because they rejected my last, anonymous submission that was way cooler and forward-thinking than whatever cringe, millennial, “I read Nick Land once,” Wojak shit this is. More eloquently and objectively (and with less vitriol), Do Not Research has just shifted towards art and film more recently and its writing-centric past is kind of over.
Searching on Substack, the query “meme” links to a sparse collection of blogs which (if active) are mostly half-baked “This Week In Memes” type listicles that scream quantity over quality. These writers just want to get something out fast (a noble instinct) but, probably like me, they lack a larger publication that they’re interested in pursuing.
The other side of the equation is theory-heavy pieces in The Baffler or staff writer nonsense from The New York Times (among other, old people hubs) where having a historical connection between memes and classical art, or memes and politics is seemingly necessary to convince a “wise,” seasoned editor that the topic at hand is worth giving a shit about. This “history” and “philosophy” lens is the crutch that stunts a lot of meme writing (in my opinion) because no one makes a meme and thinks “This is nihilist” unless they’re corny.
Meanwhile, on No Bells and Nina Protocol, the writers draw from a recent (but vast enough) history of musical nooks-and-crannies that (through evolutions) inspired the current weirdos who’re populating the underground right now. For instance, to describe why [Facy] sounds like that, a Nina columnist doesn’t need to dig back to Beethoven. They can trace back to the ‘90s (at most) and even then, it’s pretty unnecessary and trite to reach back that far unless they’re applying for grad school (or something).
Compared to music, memes have never gotten that same, casual, historical treatment because they haven’t been around for long enough. If the first internet meme (yes, internet meme (we’re not talking about Kilroy you fucking historians)) popped up in the early 2000s, then memes have been here on earth for, like, only 20 years. By comparing timeframes alone, I think the world is more than ready for casual meme blogging that mirrors the fun yet still serious tone of music blogging which prides itself on deep, niche knowledge because enough deep, niche knowledge is source-able from the 30-or-so odd years that it needs.
I wish meme writing had a Nina Protocol, or a Baffler, that’s aesthetically well-designed and thematically catered to a hipster audience who’re on my good side.
I just want to create a publication like that (for memes), or at least be part of one.
Back in 2020, I applied to write for Know Your Meme’s magazine Meme Insider and I kind of thought that would be it: the perfect publication for my work. I’ve since realized that it’s just one guy’s vanity project (who doesn’t even show up to work anymore (I’m not entirely sure what he does)) and many of the pieces I’ve submitted go un-edited, with all of my typos and mistakes included. (I’m not paid enough to correct them.)
I just don’t have a lot of trust in the publication.
Regardless, writing for Meme Insider is what got me my job at Know Your Meme, and I’m thankful for that because a job in media is rare at the moment. Writing for websites and digital newspapers is dire. Companies are tanking in comparison to blue-check, AI-written cesspools like Dexerto. If anything’s “nihilist” it’s the state of media. (In this sense, I’m using “nihilist” here because it sensationalizes the meaningless of the word caused by its overuse when describing memes in pieces that try to make sense of the ephemeral and avant-garde public art form.)
In reality, the idea that memes are nihilist, or dada, or baroque (or whatever textbook buzzword is on your mind) doesn’t matter anymore because news anchors and college professors will already note that to the younger generations (and each other in the staff room) for years to come (unprompted). Why drill the historicism into the ground when we already have enough memes from the past 20 years (hell, even the last five years) to bring things into context? Like music writers, I want meme writers to flex obscure, global knowledge from our own lifetimes and make a shared history for everyone consuming them.
©owencarry.com