American "Shamate" is becoming popular in Solana

Author: Peng SUN; Source: Foresight News

I don’t know if you have noticed that in the past week, the wild dogs flying around on Solana gave birth to a popular political and cultural phenomenon. Their growth rate is astonishing, and even caused zkSync, Phantom , Messari founder Ryan Selkis and others.

They originated from political figures and spread to the fields of entertainment, culture, business and religion. These memes are always based on the playful homophony and variation of vowel letters (a, e, i, o, u) on English words, which is very similar to the "Martian" in the Shamut era 15 years ago. In terms of artistic expression, they stretch their necks and tilt their heads, creating a slightly exaggerated visual effect that makes them look like young men.

Memecoins of the same style emerge on Solana almost every day, emerging in endlessly, often hundreds and thousands of times. For example, olen mosk (Musk), doland tremp (Trump), jeo boden (Biden), Killary Clenton (Hillary), JFK (Kennedy), berik obema (Obama), whoren (Elizabeth Warren), Puten (Putin) ), keem (Kim Jong-un), gery gaysler (U.S. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler), LEREY (BlackRock founder Larry Find), Benance (Binance), Chungpingzao (Changpeng Zhao), taylur and TelorSwif (Taylor Swift), YEEZUS (Adidas Yeezy shoes), Kenye East (Kanye West), sidny zwine (American actress Sydney Sweeney), juses crust (Jesus) and so on. The author noticed that meme with this theme has been extended from Solana to Ethereum.

So, where does this type of memecoin cultural and artistic style come from, and why has it become a consensus cultural phenomenon? Today, Foresight News will interpret and analyze this cultural phenomenon from the perspectives of memetics, politics, history and other disciplines.

Shamate and Internet memes

Shamate is the one who can’t go back long ago characteristics of the era. In the middle ages of the Chinese Internet led by Tencent QQ, shamat, non-mainstream, and Martian literature were the identity and social expression of countless teenagers. It wasn’t until today, many years later, that I suddenly realized that this was actually an early “Internet meme.”

In Webster's dictionary, "meme" has two interpretations. One refers to interesting things, especially those widely used on social media. Interesting and fun pictures or videos spread, etc.; the second refers to the ideas, behaviors, styles or use cases spread among people in a culture.

Shamate is different from the emoticons with text on current social software or social media, but their language (Martian script) and hairstyle have already been used in the early Internet It becomes a collective identity under the influence. American linguist Edward Sapir once said, "There is something behind language, and language cannot exist without culture." The cultural meme behind Shamate is probably a self-mockery of youth towards poverty in the process of urbanization, as well as rebellion against family and authority.

In fact, "meme" is a concept of cultural evolution, first proposed by Oxford University zoologist Richard Dawkins in the book "The Selfish Gene" propose. Why cultural evolution? Let’s first take a look at what “genes” are. Dawkins believes that genes are the basic unit of biological evolution, and "replicating genes" are the ancestors of life. "Replicating genes" require "natural selection and survival of the fittest", and organisms are used to complete the inheritance and inheritance of genes. reproduce.

In the past few years, I believe most people have said this, "The essence of human beings is repeaters." This sentence sounds like a mockery of others' imitation and plagiarism, without innovation, but if you think about it carefully, you will find that the essence of human beings is really a repeater. Because most of human knowledge from ancient times to the present is passed down orally and continues from generation to generation. For example, if you hear an anecdote at the dinner table today, it may become a topic of conversation for you and other friends tomorrow.

The process of knowledge and cultural inheritance is like the theory of biological evolution. Only the fittest can survive and then be widely disseminated. This is what Dawkins defines as a "meme," which develops Darwin's theory of biological evolution and has the same fidelity (variability), fecundity, and survival as genes. You may even observe that the pronunciation of meme and gene are very similar.

From an evolutionary perspective, the Internet and memes are a natural match. Because the Internet is extremely communicable, it transcends space limitations and gives memes unprecedented propagation and reproduction power. The "fittest" will be retained for a long time, otherwise they will be short-lived.

For another example, religion is a kind of memetics. Islam under the Jewish genealogy is the most important, with particular emphasis on spreading doctrines, expanding the congregation, and making people The offspring of European fear. If you understand memetics, you have a basic understanding of what’s going on with Solana’s popular political meme coin.

"Care about politics, start from an emoticon"

"Care about politics, start from an emoticon" "The beginning of emoticons" is the pan-entertainment manifestation of American politics in the image society in the past 10 years.

Last week on March 5, the United States ushered in Super Tuesday, which happens once every four years, which is the day of the U.S. presidential primary election. States will hold primaries and caucuses, and their election results are also strong indicators of the final possible presidential candidates of both parties.

Among the political meme coins, the first ones to appear are tremp and boden. Trump and Biden are the most competitive Republicans and Democrats in the United States in 2024 respectively. presidential candidate. As of March 11, Republican Trump is far ahead with 1,075 votes, but has not yet reached the 1,215 vote threshold; Democratic Joe Biden is far ahead with 1,866 votes, but has also not reached the 1,969 vote threshold. (Real-time tracking: Politico)

Why do memecoins with portraits of political figures appear? The author believes that the root cause is "The Meme-Ification of American Politics" (The New Yorker)

This matter probably goes back to By Pepe the Frog in 2015-2016, there was no pepe, the local dog in Crypto.

Pepe the Frog was created by Matt Furie in the comic Boy's Club in 2005. It became an Internet meme in 2008 and various emoticons in 2014. . But starting in 2015, Pepe began to be regarded as a symbol of the alt-right, and alt-right groups such as Nazi Germany, the Ku Klux Klan, and white power skinheads began to use Pepe. During the 2016 US election, the Pepe meme became associated with the US presidential election. The alt-right is a mainstream conservatism in American society that advocates white supremacy, supports Trump, and opposes immigration and a pluralistic society.

In October 2015, Trump retweeted a Trump Pepe picture from the alt-right P on Twitter, with the text "You can't beat Trump." "You can't Stump the Trump" (You can't Stump the Trump) to express his political opinions.

Later, in mid-September, when the Pepe frog made headlines, Hillary said that most of Trump's supporters were "a bunch of deplorables," implying that they had negative qualities such as racism and sexism. Trump's son shared a photo of the "Suicide Squad" movie poster on Instagram, in which Pepe, Trump and other conservatives were labeled "deplorables."

Not long after, Hillary's team published the article "Trump, Pepe, and White Supremacists: An Explanation" (now deleted), claiming that "Pepe is more sinister than you think." At this point, Pepe symbolizes white supremacy and has become a social consensus in the United States.

In 2020, when Biden was campaigning against Trump, the 78-year-old Biden meme package had been portrayed by conservatives as "aging", "Old", "slow" and even "weak" have created the impression that "Biden is too old to serve as president." However, Trump is only 4 years younger than Biden. The key is that Biden is a white moderate and advocates "calm politics," while the alt-right's worldview is full of binary oppositions, black and white, male and female, and racial opposition.

In "The Crowd", the fundamental reason why groups develop unconsciousness is that individuals in the group can easily fall into metaphysical duality in emotions and thinking. In the midst of opposition, the world is dualistically opposed and things are simplified. This is also the reason why binary computers defeated ternary computers, because this world is easiest and best to understand using binary oppositions. What’s more, duality is indeed part of the world and can explain some things.

Furthermore, in social media in the Internet era, the more clear-cut and extreme the content, the more powerful it is to spread. It really doesn’t matter which one you choose. What’s important is that the Internet gives individuals a space to release their emotions, and this can easily create a widely circulated Internet meme.

This is how memes like Pepe and the story of the U.S. presidential campaign were born. But meme itself is a form of cartoon expression. American political cartoons have appeared as early as the second half of the 19th century. At that time, the cartoons of Thomas Nast, the father of American cartoons, had an important impact on five presidential elections, including supporting Lincoln, Grant, and U.S. Navy. John S. and Cleveland, and mocked the losers with scathing cartoons. The "Donkey-Elephant Controversy" in the politics of the two parties in the United States was created by Thomas Nast's cartoons published in Harper's Weekly in 1874 and 1877.

Image source: Helen Kampion, The Donkey and Elephant, The White House.

In the Internet age, the medium of political cartoons has been replaced by memes. But no matter which form it is, it simplifies complex politics into a symbol that satisfies the people's curiosity and ugliness. It uses provocative political comments such as acrimony, ridicule, satire, slander, and humor to transform obscure and serious national politics. The image of the leader is entertainment-oriented. This is the characteristic of American democracy, which is enough to allow all people to participate in democratic politics, even though it is causing American society to become increasingly divided.

Back to business, back to our discussion of Solana memes. Let’s take a look at tremp first. It has increased nearly a thousand times since February 28, and its current market value is about $29 million.

tremp's meme is of a blond middle-aged man full of energy, and its slogan is "mek memes gret agen".

tremp meme-izes Trump's presidential campaign's political appeal:

· He's Solana's billionaire president

· His job is to make more and more money

· He wants to destroy joe boiden

· He wants to unify the meme on Solana

· Finally, give your vote to Trump in 2024 Popular bar!

On the other hand, Biden’s boden is getting old. But maybe it is self-deprecation by Biden supporters to express support for Biden and canvass votes for Biden through memecoin.

boden was launched on March 4 and has increased more than 1,000 times in the past week. Its current market value is approximately US$40 million.

In fact, both tremp and boden are political symbols during this period, which are the result of the memeticization of American politics. For example, yesterday Messari founder and CEO Ryan Selkis tweeted that the market value of Tremp has exceeded that of Boden, but then the crypto wallet Phantom asked Ryan in the comment area whether he voted for Boden.

Promoted by the US presidential primaries, memes of world political figures with the same theme have also appeared on the Solana stage, such as Hillary, Obama, Kim Jong-un, Kennedy, Warren, Putin, Hitler, etc. At the same time, such memes have also spread from political figures to business, entertainment, culture, religion, criminals, etc.

Generally speaking, the Solana Trump and Biden themed memes themselves have a pan-entertainment nature, but the memes derived from tremp and boden have been eliminated Political factors are more about "entertaining yourself to death". Most of them are not supported by good fundamentals and tend to rise and fall sharply. But regardless, as a meme, it worked.

Back to 2012: Wrongly spelled Spider-Man, explosive Spodeerman

Wrong spelling Where did the Trump and Biden themed meme coins come from? This is a question many people have.

From what we can see now, the anime prototype of Crooked Head should be Spodeerman. According to the Know Your Name website, Spodeerman is a misspelling of Spider-Man and first appeared on FunnyJunk on March 29, 2012, as a Microsoft Paint image. This is one of the most ugly versions of Spider-Man's drawings, posted by user vilfederation and racking up over 770 likes and 64,000 views in 5 years.

At first, people reposted the Spodeerman picture and made comments. These comments included deliberately misspelling the letters of Spider-Man, and Mary Jane and Green Goblin were also changed to mari jene and grn gublyn.

On March 30, Spoderman appeared in Dolan's comic, which was also posted to FunnyJunk:

On April 12, a YouTuber named Dolan Duk uploaded the animation "The Uncle Dolan Show Episode 1", In this episode, Dolan and Gooby run into Spodeerman.

On July 23, the Spodeerman channel on YouTube was launched and now has 317,000 subscribers. The last video was in 2018, and the first video "Spoderman Theme Song" received more than 680,000 views in 5 years.

On September 10, 2016, Behind The Meme shared "What is a spoderman? Explaining the history of the Spider-Man meme" on YouTube, with over 1.25 million views.

Obviously, the Spoderman meme has long since become a widely recognized internet meme. If you go to Spoderman's YouTube channel, you will also find that this meme has been related to American politics and the US presidential election around 2014.

We have finished the history of Spoderman, now let’s return to the tremp and boden themed meme coins. If there is no forensic error, their origin is Spodeerman. Because over the past decade, Spoderman's internet presence has been staggering.

On January 24, 2024, the Spodermen-themed meme currency Spoody on Solana was officially launched, with a maximum increase of nearly 100 times and a current market value of US$2.3 million. Notably, on March 5, Spoody announced that it had acquired the rights to Spodemen from the estate of the original creator.