Comment by maxbond
6 days ago
Allegedly a Straussian meme is "self stabilizing" because it imposes some sort of cost to buying into the lower or higher meaning. So it's a multiple entendre that has ideological or epistemic implications. (I'm not convinced this is a thing, the examples were pretty contrived.)
Whereas in the example here, acting on that advice is costly (it means losing friends) but believing it is free. And there aren't different layers of meaning accessible to different parties. It's straightforwardly a play on words.
I've been trying to come up with "self stabilizing" examples since yesterday, but think I finally may have stumbled upon one:
"Prep hop" videos, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPPpjU1UeAo or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1N3WXZ_1LM , may get forwarded by members of different subcultures for two different reasons: the first because they appreciate the comic satirisation of others, and the second because they appreciate how the comics have sweated the details of their own subculture — "we are like that only".
Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McMSHqWM3G8
ELI5 the costs in each case?
- Cost to the low (those who live on what they have earned): if we thought it was real it would mean that wealth was not on a bell curve and there may be a world past the one that all the think bois who write self help posts sketch out.
- Cost to the high (those who live on what they have): no good would come if we said it was real to folks who don't know (TMTC) and it could be bad, if they did not like that we have what we do.
We all stroll down the road of life, but if folks do not care to look at lanes not like theirs, it might make strife to both say the lanes are there, and not to laugh.
How do these costs sound?
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