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this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Go to a physics professor and they'll tell you everything is physics. Go to a math professor and they'll tell you everything is math. Go to a philosophy professor and they'll tell you everything is philosophical.
Not everything is about power inherently. People can and often will make almost anything about power. But it's not inherent to the thing. But you might disagree.
However the degree to which things are political can vary greatly. Would you agree? Voting at the presidential elections is a more political act than watching birds or playing with my kids.
I think what people mean in your view's context is that they'd like to keep memes away which directly refer to a topic which is to a high degree politicized. Instead they prefer memes which are at maximum very indirectly related to politics.
I'm sure you know that but this is my one try at a good faith discussion.
I don’t disagree with you about each professor thinking their subject is the most relevant.
That’s interesting in and of it self though, maybe people should consider looking through things using different lenses. When they don’t look at a topic as political, maybe they should, perhaps it’d give a perspective they hadn’t previously considered.
In saying people want to keep memes away from politics, the problem is if you accept my premise that anything can relate to politics it’s functionally not possible to keep memes away from politics.
So instead what’s left is actually control on the discourse of what memes we can make and those we can’t. Or rather ‘which ones are political’ (not acceptable) and ‘which ones aren’t political’ (acceptable).
Now practically I agree the bow gets longer to draw on a meme relating to beef stroganoff but who gets to decide the boundary line? I assert no one gets to decide because the boundary doesn’t ever exist. All memes have a political component so to attempt to stifle discussion based on a memes political content is useless.
This is why people who say ‘let’s not make it political’ are really just saying ‘I don’t want you to talk about that topic because it’s unacceptable to me and not something I want to address’ - cool thanks for expressing your opinion, next time not saying anything would be better.
I think the boundary is set in this case by the community and ultimately by the moderators. Would it be an arbitrary and very fuzzy line? Sure. Will everyone like it? No. But that's why it is good that one can simply make their own instances and communities. But I am glad we can agree that different degrees of closeness to politics do exist and that it is possible to differentiate them. You don't think there is value in doing so as I understand it. And I think that's a perfectly sensible point to take.
I think this is why your argument goes a bit into strawman territory. Your interpretation is pure guesswork and putting words in the mouth of others without giving them the benefit of the doubt.
For me personally it is simply that I don't want to have heavily political discussions all the time. As you can probably see from this post here I don't mind a good discussion. Political or otherwise. Although you'd probably argue that every discussion is political.
Sometimes I just want to look at funnies and not think about the complex power dynamics of societies and the world. That doesn't mean I never want to discuss those. But I like to have places where I can go knowing it's not that. And I think several people here want this memes community to be such a place.
People here don’t realise the boundary line of what constitutes acceptable political meme discourse is far away from their expectations.
This the Marxist-Leninist meme community.
If people ‘don’t want politics’ in their memes I’d suggest they go to a different community.
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My arguments about power are pretty well understood among social science academics. I didn’t come up with these ideas, I was taught them.
That aside, what do you think someone means when they say ‘let’s not talk about this topic’ do you not accept that’s an attempt to exercise power of what is acceptable discourse?
Who are they to decide?
I’d argue they are exercising covert power.
If you’re interested in the academic underpinnings of this view go read Lukes’ paper on the three faces of power.