>>223616Yes. All of that is true. It all comes down to consumer culture.
Ever since around 2015, culture, especially as it relates to memes and online content, have been declining, and at this point in time, I see soyjaks and the culture of that website as being the ultimate manifestation of that.
Think about it. Around 2015, tech started to become more and more pervasive in everyday life, arguably this happened in 2010 or so but I consider 2015 to be the year we hit the cultural event horizon, between the election campaign (which, regardless of what you think of Trump, he undeniably was the catalyst behind the dumbing down and gamification of politics, as well as the increased political tribalism we see today), the rise in surreal memes and subsequent death of the unironic top-text-bottom-text meme, the rise of irony and mean-spirited humor more generally, and if I had to guess the modern period of economic decline we're now feeling the effects of in America. Of course, the tariffs and shit accelerated it but I think the line would've gone down regardless as China begins to take up more market share.
The point is, people stopped living in the real world, which leads memes to collapse inwards on themselves. Again, think about it. In the olden days memes generally referenced real-life politics or situations because there was a good balance of real life and screen time. There were memes about video games and stuff like that but shit like bad luck Brian and all that were funny because they were awkward real life situations. These days, memes, especially those aimed at normies, are generally referential nods to the latest big thing on the internet. The event horizon of THIS phenomenon is self-reference, which is exactly what soyjaks are. Soyjaks reference their own culture and again act as a shibboleth. They're funny by themselves sometimes which is why normies tend to get into soyjaks in the first place but generally speaking you can tell when someone is just using a soyjak as a normies and when they're a soybaba. Soyjak culture is a reflection of the state of meme culture, it's:
>mean-spirited>shallow>derives humor from reference to itself, sometimes absurdityAt the end of the day, the root causes of this problem are corporate greed (this kind of punchy, instantly digestible humor is a direct result of the dumbing down of society perpetrated by corporats), socioeconomic conditions (poor people have fewer means and less motivation to go outside, outside of work, thus skewing their screen-time-real-life balance), and neoliberal politics (corporats use politicians from both parties to secure their position and ensure the lowest possible amount of regulation, allowing them to capitalize on economic stratification by fomenting addiction, especially among the working class)
All that said, part of it is also just the changing of the times. 4chan was destined to die eventually. It's no longer quirky and shocking, and between that and them being hostile to outsiders, they kinda dug their own graves.
>but isn't all that bs you just said about meme culture also the changing of the times?Could be, but I don't think so. Correlation ≠ causation obviously but I think it's also irresponsible to ignore the correlation between the shortening lifespan of memes, the advancement and accessibility of technology, the screen-time-real-life balance of most people, and the increasing amounts of economic and political power held by corporats ever since 2015 and ESPECIALLY the 70s. I think there's a very strong argument to be made that the lifespan of memes is correlative to the health of society in general, or at least internet culture, funny as it sounds.