We: The Flawless Product of a Never-Ending Experiment
The term meme was coined by Richard Dawkins to describe “units of cultural transmission” — ideas, symbols, aesthetics that evolve like genes. If it’s sticky, if it spreads, it lives. Hideo Kojima, in The Creative Gene, put it bluntly: humans are vessels for memes. We absorb, replicate, and perform them, often without knowing why.
You don’t remember the first time you saw the Coca-Cola logo, but your brain does. You don’t know why you associate Red Bull with energy and risk-taking, but your nervous system fires differently when you see a can. You’ve probably never watched Formula 1 in the early 2000s, but if I say “Marlboro,” your mind flashes to a red Ferrari, pit crews, and Schumacher flying through the rain.
That’s not coincidence. That’s memetics.
We are all living inside the most successful, long-running social experiment in human history. Not designed by scientists in a lab, but shaped organically by culture, branding, repetition, and media. A kind of open-source conditioning, updated in real time.
For most of the 20th century, this process was top-down. Culture came from a handful of elite broadcast towers — TV, radio, print, ad agencies. The 90s felt like an era with “one truth”: one version of cool, one style of beauty, one definition of success. What MTV played, what your magazine said, what your teacher told you — that was the world.
Then the internet cracked it open.
Today, everyone is a node. Everyone is a channel. Your TikTok feed is a weird soup of DIY philosophers, anime cooks, startup kids, 2000s nostalgia edits, and AI-generated hustle sermons. It’s memetic chaos. The algorithm doesn’t care about authority — it cares about virality. Cultural values are no longer handed down — they’re voted up.
That’s good and bad.
It means you get to choose your inputs. But it also means you’re always being programmed — by thousands of micro-trends and emotional hooks fighting for space in your mental OS.
Just like actors, we start becoming what we rehearse.
Heath Ledger knew that better than most. When he took on the role of the Joker in The Dark Knight, he didn’t just memorize lines — he became something else. He locked himself in a hotel room for weeks, writing journals in the Joker’s voice, experimenting with makeup, posture, and laughter. It wasn’t a gimmick. It was total immersion.
He pulled the role from somewhere deep and chaotic — and it consumed him. Friends said he couldn’t sleep. His thoughts blurred with the character. The performance was unforgettable, iconic… and it came at a cost. He died before the film was released.
Ledger’s Joker was extreme method acting — but aren’t we all doing a version of this?
We scroll, we absorb, we copy, we build a persona. We rehearse our jokes, our selfies, our job titles, our beliefs. Then we wake up and wonder why we feel like someone else.
This article… is a letter to myself.
A message from one layer of my identity to another. Because when I zoom out, I realize a lot of “me” is inherited. Downloaded. Compiled. My “character build” was assembled through years of media exposure, early online obsessions, product placements, Tumblr-core aesthetics, and YouTube rabbit holes. From Tony Hawk Pro Skater to Supreme to cyberpunk fonts to late-night Adult Swim.
What felt authentic was often just highly refined branding.
But here’s the power move: once you realize you’re a character, you can start writing better scripts.
You can audit your sources.
You can curate your inputs.
You can unfollow and rewire.
This isn’t about becoming “real.” There is no original you buried under the memes. It’s about becoming intentional. If you’re going to method act through life, at least choose your role consciously. Write a better backstory. Pick better reference material.
We’re shifting from an age of centralized culture to a memetic free market. From prime-time TV to Discord servers. From curated truth to collective remix. It’s confusing — but it’s also liberating.
You are an experiment.
But you’re also the scientist.
Run better tests.
