Despair Meme

Despair Meme - is a self-replicating cognitive pattern of helplessness before a threat you cannot control. It may cause aggressive or a paranoid behaviour and makes people prone to negative expectations of the unknown and seeing the environment as hostile and full of dangers.

Among Randonauts DM is known to create what is called "Trespassing Complex", when visiting an uncharacteristic location creates the feeling that you are doing something wrong and will be punished for that. It happens because DM increases the tendency to assume dangers and the worst scenarios in the state of uncertainty.

## Theory

Not always memes exist in the form of conscious ideas or images. Sometimes they can be persistent behavioral or emotional patterns with the property of replication. And as we will see from this chapter, sometimes such patterns can be destructive.

One of the significant factors influencing our world view and social relations are memes belonging to the Despair Meme (DM) class. Such memes are characterized by the presence of a meme agent with a very specific structure based on a semantic signal, carrying both discomfort and an insurmountable obstacle to its elimination. At the meta level, this signal modifies the cognitive cycle of adaptation to threats in such a way that it jams in the anxiety producing stage, where it infinitely produces a signal of the presence of danger, but does not receive encouragement from resisting it.

In an attempt to get such reward, by counteracting at least something, the carrier begins to search for enemies or targets for dumping aggression in the environment and passes the meme to the following carrier, committing actions similar to those that have caused DM infection in himself. After the incubation period has passed, the meme is able to recreate its semantic signal on its own, maintaining its relevance for the carrier even if the external influence on him has ceased long ago.

And this is how the cycle is modified by the impact of DM transactions, which are divided into two main types:

* Type 1. The threat, the source of which can not be determined.
* Type 2. A threat that cannot be neutralized without creating even greater danger.

In both cases, the consciousness signals the danger, but does not find a solution and only predicts the repetition of the danger in the future. As a result, the only way to emulate the end of a cycle for a while and get reward system activated is to transfer the DM to someone else in the form of a DM-transaction. However, this does not interrupt the cycle and the brain constantly signaling about the danger soon becomes tired and increases the level of cortisol, turning into an energy-saving mode, which is accompanied by apathy and depression.

In the final stage, the DM develops the ability to auto-stimulate, when the cycle is modified to such an extent that it can perceive anything as a threat. A state of paranoia arises and the carrier looks for signs of danger in everything, projecting the DM pattern onto any deviations in the surrounding world as onto Rorschach stains. Seeing anything unusual, he immediately thinks of it as a threat, which, due to its uncertainty, cannot withstand. So DM can continue to activate itself for years.

Summarizing the above, the infection of a person with DM will look like this: First, people who are infected with DM will act on a person, spreading information or creating situations containing the DM pattern.

A characteristic symptom in the early stages of infection is a pronounced oscillatory nature of the emotional state of the carrier: a person who is attacked by despair-meme will experience an alternation of emotional ups and downs, and the rises will become weaker each time until consistently depressed with occasional spikes of irritability and nervousness.

In this state, the carrier begins to actively disseminate negative information and emotions with the same structure as those that infected him with DM. Autostimulation of DM makes the carrier suspicious of everything new and unusual.

Over time, the carrier begins to associate himself with all the characters of folklore who fails, and in general almost anything will remind him of the DM pattern and put him to a depressive or irritated state. There is an obsession that “everything is bad”. Paranoia and fear can also begin to develop regarding the threats that the DM carrier will invent without reason.

In such a nervous state, there is a greater need for securitization, and in order to feel safe from fictional enemies, the carrier will actively promote hostility towards them, infecting entire memeplexes with DM. Prolonged exposure to DM subsequently causes an increased level of cortisol, which puts the brain in an energy-saving mode and makes it seek out reasons for refusing any constructive activity.

DM is most often transmitted through hidden transactions in communication, that is, at the level of meta-information.

These hidden transactions in the dialogue can be packaged both in direct aggression and in quite innocuous-looking statements, which, regardless of their content, are intended to cause an emotional decrease in the interlocutor, and this motive can be laid unconsciously. The ability to recognize them  allows you to gradually develop immunity. Consider the most typical group of DM transactions:

#### 1. Depreciation.

This type 1 DM is manifested in the fact that in response to any person’s story about their achievements, the meme carrier must say something that will make these achievements look insignificant or completely disastrous.

This may be a comparison with someone more successful, a negative outlook or a search for flaws, the main thing is that the hidden intention of the comment is to make the interviewee give up on his successes and feel the futility of his efforts. In the case of increased activity of the meme, even if no one talks about success, the carrier will, by inertia, strive to make the maximum number of critical and hostile comments and negatively respond to everything he hears.

#### 2. Negative Retranslation.

Less directional, but very common DM of the first type.

It is expressed in the fact that the meme carrier seeks to retell and disseminate extremely bad and frightening news, or to distort neutral news, omitting positive moments and highlighting negative ones. Such a transaction is designed to give others the impression that the world around is terrible and hostile, injustice reigns in it, and the carrier does not know where to send the frustration, because he cannot change this.

Sometimes the repeaters of bad news may even be outraged if their story does not cause resentment or concern to the interlocutor, even if he has nothing to do with this subject. As a result of saturation of the information background with bad news, a person constantly feels danger, the source of which is so far from his real competence that he cannot effectively oppose anything to it and feels helpless. It is also worth noting that this way the despair-meme is most actively spread through the mass media, which exploit the property of the DM to attract the attention of those infected to such information.

A popular trick that the carrier's mind uses to distort information - excessive generalizations, for example, such as “Everyone says ...”, “It is believed that ...”, “Everyone is doing this”, etc. Thus, the victim cannot counterpose the counterargument to a non-existent source of the problem and is powerless. In such cases, to counter, it is enough to ask the speaker for clarification on which particular examples this statement is based. Sometimes, in combination with the image of a popular threat, despair-memagent of this type may create an agent of paranoia, causing mass hysteria, leading to the formation of class I void-active memes.

#### 3. Direct aggression with the induction of helplessness.

DM of the second type. Direct aggression, designed primarily to demonstrate to the victim his/her helplessness. At the same time, the aggressor is usually either disproportionately stronger than the victim or occupies a higher social position, which does not allow to resist him. For example, when a boss regularly shouts at a subordinate, he also begins to behave like that with his subordinates or family members.

#### 4. Nagging.

The passive form of the second type DM, in which the carrier, being in a long-depressed state, needs to endlessly complain about everything, how bad everything is and how irreconcilable and hopeless it is. The purpose of the transaction is to cause the interlocutor emotional discomfort through empathy and decline any advice received, proving that it is impossible to correct the problem. An infected person will also refuse any help and insist on his hopelessness. This is exactly a completely unconstructive whining, the author of which is trying to prove that nothing can be done about it. In other words, the one who listens to this is forced to sympathize, but absolutely powerless to change something. In the absence of empathy, such a transaction would quickly collapse.

#### 5. Intolerant Conformism.

This type of DM is manifested in carriers of infected memeplexes, where a whole complex of social norms and beliefs begin to intensify their meme-allergic reactions with the help of DM. In such a situation, any deviation from the norms of memeplex causes a disproportionately high sense of threat and increased hostility.

This form of despair-meme is the most dangerous, as its carriers are able to join forces in their destructive strivings. Memo-allergic reactions are natural for memeplexes, but usually cause only hinder the assimilation of ideas harmful to memeplex, while DM increases the negative reaction a lot.
The principle, however, is the same, except that a person struck by an ordinary DM sees enemies in everyone around him, and those struck by a collective DM sees enemies in everyone who does not belong to their memocomplex, that is, looks, behaves or thinks differently.

## How to resist

To reduce the effect of Despair-meme, it is enough to understand its nature and try not to succumb to it, then over time the brain will learn to filter out groundless fears. There are also techniques, such as facial interpretation bias modification (FIBM), you can google them. We also recommend avoiding negative emotional reactions to information in the media whenever possible if this information is outside your locus of control. Ask yourself if this information really matters to you or if you're just projecting it onto yourself. Try not to oppose yourself to anything, but to understand the principles by which the surrounding world functions and to find opportunities for yourself in them. Learn to see new things as a benefit, not a threat.