As they lurk unseen by almost everyone, they wreak havoc on an unsuspecting public, who make sense of things by inventing narratives to explain the horrors around them. While the events of Devlin’s book are horrifically plausible, in There is No Antimemetics Division by Sam Hughes (also known by the pseudonym qntm), perceptual expectations are managed by some of the creepiest supernatural beings imaginable. Memes can even distort what is right in front of your face. Other times, they are more sinister, like the kissing men who may or may not be cannibals, or a conspiracy theory that a pizza restaurant had paedophiles in its basement. Sometimes, these are harmless, like the dress that seems to be both blue and white or the audio version, yanny/laurel. Memes can set those expectations, distorting and warping them with someone else’s narrative. This sinister process is well established in neuroscience: where our expectations lead, our perceptions of reality follow. Whether you consent or not, it will nestle between the folds of your brain and start to lay its eggs. From the QAnon conspiracy theory to the cheezburger cat, there is no telling what will show up in your feed or who produced it. But in our hyper-networked world, memetic spread has become uncontrolled and uncontrollable, and there is something a little unsettling about it. Richard Dawkins coined the term meme for the phenomenon in 1976, back when it was a relatively unproblematic aspect of how units of culture are transmitted through society. Like that trick where someone tells you not to think about an elephant, once the image has made its way into your mind, you can’t stop the chain of events that unfolds. Memes are, of course, ideas that lend themselves to jumping from one brain to another. Devlin has written a horror story where the “zombies” are memes. This zombie apocalypse is nothing like what you have been taught to expect by previous books and movies. But if you think I just spoiled the plot, think again. Without giving too much away, Spence is recounting these events from the rehabilitation facility where infected people are slowly reintegrated into society. “Some people said the men were kissing, some insisted one was biting the neck of the other,” Spence recalls. He is describing the viral video that kicked off the zombie apocalypse. “THE quality wasn’t very good, but it was good enough for a debate,” says Spence, the narrator of Malcolm Devlin’s short but powerful horror novella And Then I Woke Up.

Antimemetics division book