Meme-Hunting Expedition: Toronto

By Tao Lin,
Toronto’s memes, I now know, were centered most richly in the [Asian-country]-town area, which I unfortunately moved away from upon leaving my Megabus, rapidly discerning less memes (and of lower rebloggability, I felt) until I arrived, ~50 minutes later, at Whole Foods, whose combination of social awareness and professionally modern aesthetic has proven highly unfriendly to the nourishment of young memes—those who don’t “die” early are “snuffed out” daily by managers. Because I was deceived (by the initially abundant flora of memes) to believe, on some level—with increasing desperation and then actually a kind of fatalism bordering on nihilism—that there would be “more memes ahead” many powerful, potentially viral memes were left in the wild. These 5 memes are presented, then, as an inaccurate—a weaker, ersatz—sampling of Toronto’s visual memes.

BUFFET MEME

Associated in any manner with the concept of a “buffet” (an inherently memetic device that seems “what if” in nature but actually exists in 94% of human cultures).

Seconds after leaving my Megabus, after a ~15-hour trip from Manhattan, I perceived this meme—in the distance, across the street. Seems self-explanatory. “Over 100 Item” unconventional-grammar-usage seems both vaguely daring and simply functional (is the “s” really necessary…most would say “no” but few would actually omit it). Seems to feature sushi/sashimi as “enticements”—reasonably, I feel, neither “downplaying” nor overstating the situation. Standing on the sidewalk, holding my iPhone in the air, I peripherally noted that the sashimi was featured using a primitive foregrounding technique, allowing the meme to express a 3D element, presaging the popularity of 3D movies, and that the “Lunch Special” banner, set low (out-of-view of my photograph, I noticed later), seemed bleakly pleasing.

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