"tremp" has increased nearly a thousand times. Why is Solana's political meme coin so popular?
Original author: Peng SUN, Foresight News
I don’t know if you have noticed that in the past week, the wild dogs flying around on Solana have given birth to a popular political and cultural phenomenon. They have increased astonishingly, and even attracted the attention of zkSync, Phantom, Messari founder Ryan Selkis, etc.
They originated from political figures and spread to the fields of entertainment, culture, business and religion. These memes are always based on the playful homophony and variation of English words using vowel letters (a, e, i, o, u), which is very similar to the Martian script in the Shamat era 15 years ago. In terms of artistic expression, they stretch their necks and tilt their heads, creating a slightly exaggerated visual effect that makes them look like young men.
Memecoins of the same style emerge on Solana almost every day, emerging one after another, hundreds and thousands of times. For example, olen mosk (Musk), doland tremp (Trump), jeo boden (Biden), Killary Clenton (Hillary), JFK (Kennedy), berik obema (Obama), whoren (Elizabeth Warren), Puten (Putin) ), keem (Kim Jong-un), gery gaysler (U.S. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler), LEREY (BlackRock founder Larry Find), Benance (Binance), Chungpingzao (Changpeng Zhao), taylur and TelorSwif (Taylor Swift), YEEZUS (Adidas Yeezy shoes), Kenye East (Kanye West), sidny zwine (American actress Sydney Sweeney), juses crust (Jesus) and so on. The author noticed that memes with this theme have been extended from Solana to Ethereum.
So, where does the cultural and artistic style of memecoin come from, and why has it become a consensus cultural phenomenon? Today, Foresight News will interpret and analyze this cultural phenomenon from the perspectives of memetics, politics, history and other disciplines.
Killing Matt and Internet Memes
Killing Matt is a characteristic of that era that can no longer be returned. In the middle ages of the Chinese Internet led by Tencent QQ, shamat, non-mainstream, and Martian literature were the identity and social expression of countless teenagers. It wasn’t until today, many years later, that I suddenly realized that this was actually an early “Internet meme.”
In Merriam-Websters dictionary, meme has two interpretations. One refers to interesting things, especially interesting and fun pictures or videos that are widely spread on social media; the other refers to those in a culture. , ideas, behaviors, styles, or use cases that spread from person to person.
Shamat is different from the emoticons with text on current social software or social media, but their language (Martian script) and hairstyle have become a collective identity under the influence of the early Internet. American linguist Edward Sapir once said, There is something behind language, and language cannot exist without culture. The cultural meme behind Shamate is probably a self-mockery of youth towards poverty in the process of urbanization, as well as rebellion against family and authority.
In fact, meme is a concept of cultural evolution first proposed by Oxford University zoologist Richard Dawkins in the book The Selfish Gene. Why cultural evolution? Let’s first take a look at what “genes” are. Dawkins believes that genes are the basic unit of biological evolution, and replicating genes are the ancestors of life. Replicating genes require natural selection and survival of the fittest, and organisms are used to complete the inheritance and inheritance of genes. reproduce.
In the past few years, I believe most people have said this, The essence of human beings is repeaters. This sentence sounds like a mockery of others imitation and plagiarism, without innovation, but if you think about it carefully, you will find that the essence of human beings is really a repeater. Because most of human knowledge from ancient times to the present is passed down orally and continues from generation to generation. For example, if you hear an anecdote at the dinner table today, it may become a topic of conversation for you and other friends tomorrow.
The process of knowledge and cultural inheritance is like the theory of biological evolution. Only the fittest survive and are then widely disseminated. This is what Dawkins defines as a meme, which develops Darwins theory of biological evolution and has the same loyalty (variability), fecundity, and survival as genes. You may even observe that the pronunciation of meme and gene are very similar.
From an evolutionary perspective, the Internet and memes are a natural match. Because the Internet is extremely communicable, it transcends space limitations and gives memes unprecedented propagation and reproduction power. The fittest will be retained for a long time, otherwise they will be short-lived.
For another example, religion is a kind of memetics, and Islam under the Judaic genealogy is the most important, with a particular emphasis on spreading doctrines, expanding the congregation, and reproducing offspring that scares Europe. If you understand memetics, then you have a basic understanding of what is going on with the popular political meme currency on Solana.
Care about politics starts with an emoticon
Care about politics starts with an emoticon. This is the pan-entertainment manifestation of American politics in the image society in the past 10 years.
Last week on March 5, the United States ushered in Super Tuesday, which happens once every four years, which is the day of the U.S. presidential primaries. The largest number of states in the United States will hold primaries and caucuses, and the election results are also the final results of the two parties. A strong indicator of a possible presidential candidate.
Among political meme coins, the first ones to appear were tremp and boden. Trump and Biden are the most competitive presidential candidates for the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States in 2024 respectively. As of March 11, Republican Trump is far ahead with 1,075 votes, but has not yet reached the 1,215 vote threshold; Democratic Joe Biden is far ahead with 1,866 votes, but has also not reached the 1,969 vote threshold. (Real-time tracking:Politico）
Why do memecoins with portraits of political figures appear? The author believes that the root cause is the memeticization of American politics (The Meme-Ification of American Politics, The New Yorker)
This incident probably dates back to Pepe the Frog in 2015-2016. At that time, there was no such thing as PEPE in Crypto.
Pepe the Frog was created by Matt Furie in the comic Boys Club in 2005 and became an Internet meme in 2008 and a variety of memes in 2014. But starting in 2015, Pepe began to be regarded as a symbol of the alt-right, and alt-right groups such as Nazi Germany, the Ku Klux Klan, and white power skinheads began to use Pepe. During the 2016 US election, the Pepe meme became associated with the US presidential election. The alt-right is a mainstream conservatism in American society that advocates white supremacy, supports Trump, and opposes immigration and a pluralistic society.
October 2015, TrumpRetweet on TwitterHe posted a picture of Trumps Pepe from the alt-right P and attached the text You cant Stump the Trump to express his political opinions.
Then in mid-September, when the Pepe frog made headlines, Hillary said that most of Trumps supporters were a bunch of deplorables, implying that they had negative qualities such as racism and sexism. Trumps son shared a picture of the Suicide Squad movie poster on Instagram, in which Pepe, Trump and other conservatives were labeled deplorables.
Not long after, Hillarys team published the article Trump, Pepe, and White Supremacists: An Explanation (now deleted), claiming that Pepe is more sinister than you think. At this point, Pepe symbolizes white supremacy and has become a social consensus in the United States.
In 2020, when Biden was running against Trump, the 78-year-old Biden meme package had been portrayed by conservatives as senile, old, slow and even weak, which also caused An impression is that Biden is too old to be president. However, Trump is only 4 years younger than Biden. The key is that Biden is a white moderate and advocates calm politics, while the alt-rights worldview is full of binary oppositions, black and white, male and female, and racial opposition.
In The Crowd, the fundamental reason why groups develop unconsciousness is that individuals in the group can easily fall into metaphysical binary oppositions in their emotions and thinking, making the world binary and simplifying things. This is also the reason why binary computers defeated ternary computers, because this world is easiest and best to understand using binary oppositions. What’s more, duality is indeed part of the world and can explain some things.
Furthermore, on social media in the Internet era, content with clearer views and extreme intentions has greater dissemination power. It really doesn’t matter which one you choose. What’s important is that the Internet gives individuals a space to release their emotions, and this can easily create a widely circulated Internet meme.
This is how memes like Pepe and the story of the US presidential campaign were born. But meme itself is a form of cartoon expression. American political cartoons have appeared as early as the second half of the 19th century. At that time, the cartoons of Thomas Nast, the father of American cartoons, had an important impact on five presidential elections, including supporting Lincoln, Grant, and U.S. Navy. John S. and Cleveland, and mocked the losers with scathing cartoons. The Donkey-Elephant Controversy in the politics of the two parties in the United States was created by Thomas Nasts cartoons published in Harpers Weekly in 1874 and 1877.
Image source: Helen Kampion,The Donkey and Elephant, The White House.
In the Internet age, the medium of political cartoons has been replaced by memes. But no matter which form it is, it simplifies complex politics into a symbol that satisfies the peoples curiosity and ugliness. It uses provocative political comments such as acrimony, ridicule, satire, slander, and humor to transform obscure and serious national politics. The image of the leader is entertainment-oriented. This is the characteristic of American democracy, which is enough to allow all people to participate in democratic politics, even though it is causing American society to become increasingly divided.
Without further ado, back to the Solana meme we discussed. Let’s take a look at Tremp first. It has increased nearly a thousand times since February 28, and its current market value is about US$29 million.
The tremp meme is of a blond middle-aged man full of energy, and its slogan is mek memes gret age.
tremp meme-ified the political appeal of Trump’s presidential campaign:
Hes the billionaire president of Solana
His job is to make more and more money
he wants to destroy joe boiden
He wants to unify the meme on Solana
Finally, give your vote to Trump in 2024!
On the other hand, Biden’s boden is old, but it may be self-deprecating by Biden supporters, expressing their support for Biden and canvassing votes for Biden through memecoin.
Boden was launched on March 4 and has increased more than 1,000 times in the past week. Its current market value is approximately US$40 million.
In fact, both tremp and boden were political symbols during this period, the result of the memeticization of American politics. For example, yesterday Messari founder and CEO Ryan Selkis tweeted that the market value of Tremp has exceeded boden, but then the crypto wallet Phantom asked Ryan in the comment area whether he voted for boden.
Driven by the US presidential primaries, memes of world political figures with the same theme have also appeared on the Solana stage, such as Hillary, Obama, Kim Jong-un, Kennedy, Warren, Putin, Hitler, etc. At the same time, such memes have also spread from political figures to business, entertainment, culture, religion, criminals, etc.
Generally speaking, the Solana Trump and Biden themed memes themselves have a pan-entertainment nature, but the memes derived from tremp and boden have eliminated political factors and are more about entertainment to death. Most of them are not good Fundamental support often leads to sharp rises and falls. But regardless, as a meme, it worked.
Back to 2012: The mistaken Spider-Man, the explosive Spodeman
Where did the misspelled Trump, Biden-themed meme coins come from? This is a question many people have.
From the current look, the anime prototype of Crooked Head should be Spodeerman. according toKnow Your NameThe website shows that Spodeerman is a misspelling of Spider-Man. It first appeared on FunnyJunk on March 29, 2012, and is a Microsoft Paint image. This is one of the most ugly versions of Spider-Mans drawings, posted by user vilfederation and racking up over 770 likes and 64,000 views in 5 years.
At first, people reposted the Spodeerman picture and made comments. These comments included deliberately misspelling Spider-Man letters, and Mary Jane and Green Goblin were also changed to mari jene and grn gublyn.
On March 30, Spodeerman appeared in Dolans comic, which was also posted to FunnyJunk:
On April 12, a YouTuber named Dolan Duk uploaded The Uncle Dolan Show Episode 1 Animation, in this episode, Dolan and Gooby encounter Spoderman.
July 23, on YouTubeSpodemen ChannelIt went online and now has 317,000 subscribers. The last video was in 2018. The first video Spoderman Theme Song received more than 680,000 views in 5 years.
On September 10, 2016, Behind The Meme shared on YouTube “What is a spoderman? Explaining the history of the Spider-Man meme, with over 1.25 million views.
Its clear that the Spodeerman meme has long since become a widely recognized internet meme. If you look at Spodermans YouTube channel, you will also find that this meme was related to American politics and the US presidential election around 2014.
We have finished the history of Spoderman, now let’s return to the tremp and boden themed meme coins. If there is no verification error, then their origin is Spodeerman. Because over the past decade, Spodermans internet presence has been staggering.
On January 24, 2024, Spodermen-themed meme currency Spoody on Solana was officially launched, with a maximum increase of nearly 100 times and a current market value of US$2.3 million. It is worth noting that on March 5, Spoody announced that it had acquired the copyright to Spodermen from the estate of the original author.
references:
Shang Xinxin: Looking at the communication characteristics of Internet buzzwords from the perspective of language memes, Modern Chinese, October 2022;
The Paper: The Birth of the Trump Emoticon: When Politicians Become Entertainment Stars, September 2016;
BBC: "Pepe the Frog meme branded a 'hate symbol'", 28 Sep. 2016.
NFT Now：Political Memecoin Mania Sweeps Solana With Biden and Trump-Themed Coins, March 7, 2024.
