The Null Device

Cultural phenomenon of the day: vegansexuality, or shunning sex with meat eaters because "their bodies are made up of animal carcasses":

"When you are vegan or vegetarian, you are very aware that when people eat a meaty diet, they are kind of a graveyard for animals," vegan Nichola Kriek told the Christchurch daily The Press.

Another said: "I would not want to be intimate with someone whose body is literally made up from the bodies of others who have died for their sustenance."

¶ culture dietary laws disgust fringe politics taboo vegans 0

When memes compete for mindshare in the ideosphere, one of the things they're selected for is emotional impact. The most sensational story wins, as does the most disgusting urban legend, according to this paper. (via FmH)

(Which all makes sense; by the same token, there are other (so far anecdotal) laws of memetics. For example, it has been observed that urban legends that mention a "brand" of some category mutate to refer to the best-known brand. (For example, the one about some small fried-chicken restaurant chain supporting the Ku Klux Klan mutated into an urban legend about KFC, and it's probable that the "Albert Einstein said we only use 10% of our brains" UL started as a claim about some lesser known very smart person making that statement.) I'd speculate that this is the result of a selection for economy or consistency with one's existing knowledge/memes, or a streamlining process that erodes memes into more agile forms.)

¶ disgust emotions evolution memetics natural selection psychology replicators urban legends 2