Hacking Tree: The Meme

A meme is your message distilled into a simple cultural unit that spreads fast – something people can instantly grasp, share, and make their own.  

A meme can be a hashtag (“Black Lives Matter”), an image (a black square posted on social media in support of the Black Lives Matter movement), a fashion garment (the green bandana of the feminist movement in Latin America), a gesture or a symbol that travels quickly across networks. 

The trick is to tap into symbols your audience already knows and remix them in fresh ways to spark new associations. Keep it short, sharp, and memorable – because the simpler the meme, the further it can go. It is easier to share a GIF than an essay!

Finding the meme is based on three steps:

• 2.1 Symbols: find visible representations of meaning that your audience already connects to (e.g. a flag, gesture, colour, word). Symbols are hooks. What symbols already circulate in your audience’s world that we can remix to carry our reframe?
• 2.2 Associations: how can we remix the meaning of familiar symbols to activate our new frames, metaphors and logics?
• 2.3 Synthesis: what is the most succinct, simple and stickiest version of your message, that brings symbol and association together into a cultural unit (meme) that can jump from mind to mind. 

See an example

In the Territories of Transition, the meme was “Back to the land”  

Synthesis: “Back to the Land” as a new slogan: the simplest version (based on political reframed message behind it that was expanded in the principles)

Symbols: “Land Back” is well known in decolonial discourse. “Back to the land” is a symbol of ceremony.

Associations: flipping it to “back to the land” connects the justice meme of “land back” (legal/political restitution) to the ontoshift of ecological healing and return to right relationship with the land.