Help A Teeming Millionth With His Vague Plot Idea(s?)

Cafe Society
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I’m always percolating short story plot ideas to some degree. However, I tend to shy away from discussing them in open forums online, due to my silly fear of them being taken. However, I’m very confident with the posters here, so here goes:

I’m very interested in memetics. My vague character idea is thus: A near-future commercial memeticist that uses the “fringe science” to manipulate memes and sell his clients’ products through them. As for the plot itself, my only idea is having him roguishly manipulate the memes for his own enjoyment-- i.e., fostering an intense dislike for the number 4 in the masses. :stuck_out_tongue:

Too vague? Too illogical? Be rough on me, I can take it. :slight_smile:

More malformed little vignette ideas as they arrive. :wink:

Thanks,
Seth.

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Manipulating memes to sell shit is what advertising’s all about. If you’re looking for background material, but too lazy to read Dawkins, try “The Tipping Point.” Or search for Cecil’s columns on them and the associated commentary.

The plot, as is, is pretty lame though, unless you took it to hyperbolic extremes.

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Don’t type so fast, man! I’m trying to take notes here!

Heh. I kid, I kid.

How’s this: your “memeticist” is newly employed by a multinational ad agency. Due to his incredible test scores at meme college (or wherever the hell you learn to manipulate memes), he’s given his own project immediately. This has never happened before – usually a company trains a memeticist on their specific techniques for meme manipulation for several years before giving them an ad campaign to work on. Because, of course, you want your meme manipulation to be extremely complex so the competition can’t copy or alter it and sell their OWN stuff using YOUR meme program.

So he writes the “meme code,” or whatever it takes to manipulate the meme, and is undergoing beta testing with some subjects when he learns of a strange side-effect: All his subjects are determined to vote for George Bush in the 2004 election. (Or something equally related to control of the world.)

The guy does some digging and finds that the multinational corporation has added some lines to his meme code that directs people to think the way the company wants them to think. It turns out the company is run by a bad person/bad people (pick one: the Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, the Catholic Church, the Republican Party, Osama bin Laden, Martha Stewart).

So now the young memeticist has to figure out a way to de-program the population of the world – because, of course, the code has been written into the meme for every single product the huge multinational ad agency promotes.

Don’t forget the sex.

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Sauron, that’s getting interesting. How about for every meme he sends out, he’s got another, contrary, one that comes back and frustrates him. He finds out that there is a counter-culture of “meme hackers” who have taken it upon themselves to keep evil memedoers like our protagonist from taking over the world. He writes an extra-strong meme to blast theirs, but some meddling managerial-type inserts a few tweaks of his own (whether or not he’s part of the Skull and Bones R&D team is another matter) and it gets out of hand. Now, our prot. has to work with these underground memeticists to try to figure out how to reverse everything.

That’s a story.

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Too lazy to read Dawkins? I love Dawkins. Dawkins is my favorite author. I have reread “A Devil’s Chaplain” more times than I’d care to mention in mixed company. :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway, I’m really taking memetic theory too… I don’t know. I’m romanticizing it. A counter-meme would probably be little more than one person telling another something isn’t true.

I’ve been digging through my notepads for some of my stronger ideas. Submitted for your approval:

In a phenomenon realized only by a select few conspiracy theorists and particularly observant citizens, the town of Akron, Ohio has a significantly greater percantage of sweepstakes winners-- you know, free Hershey’s for life, novelty Volkswagen Beetles, etc. These people haven’t even the prestige of lottery winners, yet still feel separated from the common citizens.

Soon, though, they cannot handle the ravages of luckless, day-to-day life. They become greedy and protective of their hordes. Some develop fixations with locks, though no one has any great demand for their obscure winnings. They form a support group that meets twice a month on alternate Tuesdays at the Mariott near the airport.

“Winners Anonymous.”

My second idea is a lot more formless. It’s two ideas, really, the first leading into the second, I just realized. My first idea was of a character extremely vulnerable to suggestion, that upon release from a psychiatric hospital, enters a low-rent condominium furnished with couch, refrigerator, and television. Soon, protagonist patient becomes a slave to advertising from the TV.

This led me into another idea-- a shadow-governmenty internment camp for the frugal. People that don’t spend enough on consumer products have an off chance of being whisked off into Clockwork Orange-esque conditions where they are bombarded with advertising. ‘Big brother is watching you, and He knows your disposable income.’

And the thought that occurs to me: The guy who is so vulnerable to suggestion is the camp’s first escapee. His memories of the camp are gone to him, due to the trauma they induce. When found outside the internment camp, he was taken to the psych hospital, where he finally regains control of his faculties and is released. the story could be told in the order I thought of it-- that’d be more interesting, really.

Wow. Goliath post. My eternal love and devotion to anyone who trudges through either of those in their entirety. :slight_smile:

Thanks!

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You could title your first idea “Memarketing.”

Your last one could be a comedy in which the protagonist, upon escaping, is shocked to discover that drinking a certain beer does not cause big-chested women to flock to him, and that no one at McDonald’s cares about whether he smiles.