Memeability in an Attention Economy: On the Form of the Nike Kaepernick Meme

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay calls for understanding memes within the context of an attention economy, illustrating how the form of the Kaepernick Nike meme adapts to its conditions. These include a digital media ecology, abundance of information, scarcity of attention, and affective-emphasis. The Nike meme employs digital media to produce condensed images that fit into the pace and punctuated rhythm of scrolling. The iterations also frequently employ juxtaposition and paraprosdokian, forms that match the rhythms of reception in an attention economy and that surprise-shock. The essay concludes that placing memes in an attention economy context directs attention to formal cause (“memeability”) and that analyzing memes’ formal characteristics aids in understanding rhetoric in an attention economy.