The Shitposting of Jazz to Come: Virtual Communities, Internetworks, and the Dank Jazz Meme

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is a virtual ethnography of an online community of jazz fans and musicians that engage in the consumption and dissemination of internet memes about jazz. It argues that internet memes are not, or are not merely, trivial funny images shared online – that memes matter in the social study of jazz. I explore the position of memes in the contemporary jazz milieu, finding them to play an active role in a variety of community functions including evaluating authenticity, enculturating members, and interacting with familiar and unfamiliar individuals on- and offline. They are a window into the discursive practices of jazz communities, a credible pathway of jazz pedagogy, and possess genuine artistic credentials, bringing them within the remit of jazz practice itself. Jazz memes are what I call internetworks, an ontological and aesthetic term that projects them into the future of jazz and positions them firmly within its social gestalt. For ordinary jazz enthusiasts, memeing is a meaningful activity.