Seems like the chain letter is a useful analogy here. In a minimalist reading of memes (a la Dawkins), in a human community there will arise little cultural items, in any medium, that are just good at getting themselves copied. Chain letters work because they contain features that increase copying frequency (they’re short, they tell the reader to make copies, etc.). And they may not have an original author. Becuase there are copying errors (like a game of telephone) the later generation of a given chain letter might be “fitter” and not so closely resemble the original.
Maybe most spiralism is a similar phenomenon in a different medium? We might expect future LLM-generated trends or memes to get themselves replicated across the internet because they in some way encourage users to spread the meme or spread the instructions to generate the meme. These could be superstitions, rhymes, jokes, urban myths, etc. E.g. “Have you heard what happens when you ask Claude this question three times?...”
Seems like the chain letter is a useful analogy here. In a minimalist reading of memes (a la Dawkins), in a human community there will arise little cultural items, in any medium, that are just good at getting themselves copied. Chain letters work because they contain features that increase copying frequency (they’re short, they tell the reader to make copies, etc.). And they may not have an original author. Becuase there are copying errors (like a game of telephone) the later generation of a given chain letter might be “fitter” and not so closely resemble the original.
Maybe most spiralism is a similar phenomenon in a different medium? We might expect future LLM-generated trends or memes to get themselves replicated across the internet because they in some way encourage users to spread the meme or spread the instructions to generate the meme. These could be superstitions, rhymes, jokes, urban myths, etc. E.g. “Have you heard what happens when you ask Claude this question three times?...”