Things That Interest Me: How memes align really well with germ theory and infectious diseases. Like okay some memes are the more virulent kind, like, for example, the breadsticks meme. 

ok you have the patient zero, or this post; it remains relatively benign until June, where it gets its first contact with a high risk post. From there, the number of outbreaks grow exponentially; ravaging through the fandom communities, with each group getting at least a dozen smaller variations. Then, the meme enters its final, most virulent stages, dubbed the “surreal meme stages;” takes on the meme itself. this is the signal that the meme is being analyzed and is therefore on its way out. the movement from the Fandom to the Surreal stage is usually rapid, within a day. The rapid death of the meme means that it can’t infect other people so quickly, which means it dies out, with only small bursts of activity in isolated incidents.

This is compared to memes like Pepe, which are more benign, and therefore have more staying power, much like the common cold.

Ah, I see the breadsticks meme, having saturated the market, has passed out of phase one (“classic”) and is now into phase two (“self-referential,” where usage of the meme can only be understood with the original form functioning as referent). I can’t wait to see it reach phase three (“hybrid,” where it merges with another meme fatigued by phase two), phase four (“dada,” where the meme passes out of conventional usages of language), and phase five (“exhausted,” or the universal sensation of why the fuck is it still on my dash). Thus the meme reaches its hibernation stage to remain in stasis until extinction or ironic revival.