I’d say virgin-chad is on border between complex and chaotic, as is screaming woman vs cat (they’re the same idea)
“One does not simply walk into Mordor” is complicated
Yes chad/Nordic gamer is obvious
Didn’t notice until just now, but most memes with trad sensibilities tend to be in the obvious quadrant. They point to best practices in a sense-categorize-respond mode, and maintain a chaos-oblivious posture.
How it started/how it’s going is complex quadrant
Interestingly, memes don’t convey irony well because they have a context-free/global context character. To the extent a meme can be deployed ironically, you have to suggest irony via accompanying context and subtext.
Extending to other media, all explainers are complicated quadrant. Most of Substack is complicated quadrant.
Besides memes, most media tend to have a single quadrant locus.
Blog posts sometimes span all 4 though, which is why they can go viral in ways newsletters tend not to.
Memes have turned into our primary sense-making medium for a good reason. Most media have QA criteria that force them into one quadrant. Essays and books tend to have a one-quadrant voice that determines their genre classification.
Blog posts can escape but it takes real effort.
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Very important difference in that they span the range from pointing to certainties and agency to acknowledging ignorance and helplessness. Older firms rarely venture beyond modest complexity to chaos.