Its time to start talking about “memetic effluent.” In the same way corporations polluted our physical world, they’re pollution our memetic world. AI spewing garbage data is just the most obvious way, but corporations have been toxifying our memetic space for generations.

This memetic effluent will make sorting through data harder and harder over the years. But the oil and tobacco industries undermined science and democracy for decades with it’s own memetic effluent in order to protect their business for decades. Advertising is it’s own effluent that distorts and destroys language. Jerry Rubin said it in 1970, “How can I tell you ‘I love you’ after hearing ‘cars love shell?’”

While physical effluent destroys our physical environment making living in the world harder, memetics effluent destroys meaning and makes thinking about and comprehending the world harder. Both are the garbage side effects of the perpetuation of capitalism.

This example of poisoning the data well is just too obvious to ignore, but there are so many others.