Susan Blackmore

In Susan Blackmore’s “Strange Creatures” she describes the concept of the “memes eye view”. She claims the “memes eye view” is what makes humans different from animals, meaning humans can imitate therefore must be different from animals. As a reader dwells more on the thought of the “memes eye view” they can relate it to life experiences and other works of literature. For example, the “memes eye view” can be seen very clearly in “Bumping into Mr.Ravioli” by Adam Gopnik. In Gopnik’s work he describes how his daughter started to pick up the busy life style that her mother, brother , and father had adopted just by watching them through the "memes eye view". The busyness of New York is required and if the concept of humans learning by imitation…

The exponential growth of social media has spurred the creation of a unique form of communication in today’s culture. What do I meme? The use of the Internet meme has served as a phenomenon that has changed the way people communicate and have had a notable influence on forms of cultural expression. Memes are defined as, “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from one person to another in a culture and often altered in a creative or humorous way (i.e. images, phrases, snapshots, gifs,…

Black Mirror is a British television series that examines a variety of issues that face contemporary society, usually involving the implications of new technologies. Created by Charlie Brooker, this celebrated fiction series illuminates the darker, often chaotic side of evolving media and human knowledge. Using an assortment of satirical themes and motifs, this show fascinates audiences by conveying a sense of anxiousness that is felt by the fluctuating nature of modern society and its…

A meme is, as Blackmore describes it, “[w]hen you imitate someone else, something is passed on. This ‘something’ can then be passed on again, and again, and so take on a life of its own. We might call this thing an idea, an instruction, a behavior, a piece of information … but if we are going to study it we shall need to give it a name. Fortunately, there is a name. It is the ‘meme’” (34). When capitalism is considered a meme, ideal and practice are separated because people are more focused in…

The internet has become a cult that worships eccentricity. Take, for example, the killing of Harambe, a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo. After a three-year-old boy got inside the gorilla’s enclosure, zoo officials decided to kill Harambe, fearing for the boy’s life. The controversial decision and odd news story has become the internet’s latest obsession. Through memes like chanting “Dicks out for Harambe,” saying “Harambe died for our sins,” and putting Harambe as a write-in candidate in the US…

What is a meme? One would think that the answer would be simple and easy, after all majority of people think of memes as simple things. They are images that show up regularly on their social media sites and most of the time the response they elicit is laughter. Memes make people laugh and that is their purpose, so surely something with a simple purpose wouldn’t have a complicated nature? Well that’s where Limor Shifman would have to disagree with you. She offers a novel definition of memes:…

May 28th, 2016 the 17 year old Gorilla Harambe was shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo after picking up and dragging a 4 year old who climbed into the Gorilla’s enclosure. Footage of the incident surfaced online and sparked outrage by some over the alleged negligence of the parents and the zoo’s decision to shoot and kill Harambe. But most recognized it as an unfortunate tragedy. What should have been a temporary news story turned into a collection of memes and hashtags that have continued to…

have a quality that is so unique it separates them from everything else. And that quality is the ability to imitate. Susan Blackmore in “Strange Creatures” dives into the idea of human imitation and, “that imitation is what makes us special” (34). Blackmore provides the definition of imitation which is to copy exactly what the other person is doing and in doing so information is transferred from one to another. With this information the other person is influenced and he or she now has the power…

ideas have their individual representative that evolution has over time copied into other human brains. As a result that is what makes us different from animals and even technology; our ability to have memes control us as Susan Blackmore explains in her essay “Strange Creatures”. For instance, Susan Blackmore states, “We humans, because of our powers of imitation, have become just the physical ‘hosts’ needed for the memes to get around.This is how the world looks from a ‘meme’s eye…

Once in a life, we have been imitating a fashion and a behavior of idol or someone. What if imitation is always occurring in everyday life to individuals? In the essay, “Strange Creatures” wrote by Susan Blackmore, she claimed that whatever individuals act or think is imitation. The study said this phenomenon called “meme”. Blackmore claimed imitating is what makes us different from animals or living species. This is because humans are imitating each other without consciousness. Blackmore said…