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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 28th, 2023

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  • I would argue it is either 1) neither necessary nor sufficient, or 2) that it is sufficient but not necessary. Which line depends on whether we are talking about something literally BEING a meme, or something merely having the potential to be a meme.

    In the former case - whether something is a meme or not - having text is neither necessary nor sufficient. Adding text to an image does not a meme make, and equally some memes do not have text (or aren’t images at all).

    In the latter - whether something could be a meme - adding text is sufficient to provide that potential. It may not be necessary (6-7 for example) but it could be enough.





  • Antisemitism has be co-opted and applied to any and all criticism of Israel, as opposed to it’s previous meaning, hatred of Jews/Judaism. This isn’t strictly because the meaning of the word is being used differently as much as it is that proponents of Israel like to conflate Israel with all of Judaism, or even more broadly with all Jews (as an ethnic group as opposed to a religious one). Since Israel takes any criticism to be hatred, the inevitable consequence is that criticism of Israel becomes antisemitism. I’m splitting hairs here and probably making things more complicated than they need to be… But hopefully you understand what I’m getting at.

    Incidentally, even in its more broadly accepted definition “antisemitism” itself is a bit of an etymological oddity, because “Semites”, or the Semitic people, are both Jews, Arabs and others… Judaeophobia is an alternative that is unquestionably specific to Jews/Judaism.