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Fireside Chat with Nadia Asparouhova

TalkNadia Asparouhova
Fireside Chat with Nadia Asparouhova

In this fireside chat, Nadia Asparouhova discusses the concept of anti-memes—ideas that resist spreading or being remembered—drawing on SCP fiction and her book Anti-Mimetic. She extends an epidemiological analogy to online communities, critiquing Venkatesh Rao's 'cozy web' concept by comparing group chats to poorly-ventilated COVID pods that compress and mutate ideas rather than truly insulating people from them, and connects her SOP23 essay's 'Whitehead protocol' (good, attention-freeing automation) versus 'Kafka protocol' (bad, confusion-inducing bureaucracy) to how attention and memory shape which ideas survive.

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