Glossary
The emergent language of Kekonomics — a linguistic toolkit for making sense of a world where memes transcend humor to become economic, cultural, and political forces.
A
Absurdity Premium
The added cultural or economic value generated when something becomes valuable precisely because it appears stupid, irrational, or meaningless. In Kekonomics, absurdity can function as a speculative asset.
Accelerationism
A political and social theory suggesting that accelerating capitalism's processes can lead to its collapse or transformation. In Kekonomics, this concept humorously mirrors the chaotic acceleration of meme culture.
Affective Labor
The emotional work involved in creating connections or producing value, often seen in digital spaces. In Kekonomics, meme creators and shitposters perform affective labor by eliciting reactions and engagement.
Algorithm Face
The facial expression, pose or aesthetic people adopt because they know they are being watched, ranked and optimized by platforms
Algorithmic Absurdism
The condition in which platforms reward bizarre, exaggerated, or nonsensical content because it maximizes engagement. Kekonomics treats this as one of the core engines of meme-driven value.
Algorithmic Capitalism
An economic model driven by algorithms optimizing content delivery for engagement. Kekonomics highlights how algorithms amplify the value of memes through prioritizing sensational or humorous content.
Alienation
A condition in which individuals become estranged from their own activity, social relations, or sense of meaning. In Kekonomics, alienation appears when users produce endless content and engagement without controlling the value they create.
Always Online
A condition in which someone appears permanently connected to digital discourse, trends and platform drama. In Kekonomics, being always online becomes both a social skill and a psychological burden.
Anomie
A state of normlessness or social disorientation, often emerging when shared values weaken. In Kekonomics, meme culture can be read as both symptom and response to anomic digital life.
Astroturfing
The creation of a fake grassroots movement. Meme culture can be used to simulate organic support, making coordinated campaigns appear spontaneous.
Attention Arbitrage
The practice of capturing attention in one context and redirecting it to another for profit. In Kekonomics, memes are used to drive traffic to products, ideas, or political movements.
Attention Capture
The process by which platforms, creators, brands, or political actors seize and retain users’ focus. In Kekonomics, attention capture is the first stage in converting cultural noise into capital.
Attention Economy
An economic system where attention is a scarce and valuable resource. In Kekonomics, attention becomes currency, with memes, shitposts, and viral content functioning as commodities.
Attention Sink
A digital object, platform, or trend that absorbs large amounts of attention without necessarily producing meaningful content. Memes, drama cycles, and viral controversies often function as attention sinks.
Aura Farming
The deliberate cultivation of mystique, status or symbolic power through controlled posting, visual style, ambiguity or strategic silence.
B
Based
A term used to signal approval, usually for something seen as unapologetic, transgressive or resistant to mainstream norms. In Kekonomics, “based” functions as a compressed unit of ideological and subcultural value.
Blockchain Memetics
The use of blockchain technology to validate the authenticity and ownership of memes, turning them into tradable assets (e.g., NFTs).
Boomer Posting
A style of posting associated with outdated formats, obvious jokes, moral panic or misunderstanding internet culture. Often used ironically, even by non-boomers.
Brainrot
A term used to describe content so repetitive, absurd, or overstimulating that it appears to degrade attention or cognition. In Kekonomics, brainrot is both a symptom and a product of the attention economy.
Brandjacking
The appropriation or distortion of a brand’s image by online communities. In Kekonomics, brandjacking shows how value and meaning can escape official corporate control.
C
Clout Economy
An economy based on visibility, recognition, and status within digital networks. In Kekonomics, clout functions as a form of unstable social currency.
Clown World
A meme-derived term reflecting a perception of absurdity and chaos in modern society.
Cognitive Capitalism
An economic system where knowledge, creativity, and attention are key drivers of value.
Collective Effervescence
A term from Durkheim describing moments of shared emotional intensity within a group. In Kekonomics, viral memes produce brief flashes of collective effervescence across digital communities.
Conspicuous Consumption
The public display of goods, taste, or lifestyle to signal status. Online, this extends to aesthetic choices, niche knowledge, meme fluency, and platform identity.
Content Exhaustion
The fatigue produced by the endless demand for new posts, reactions, formats, and takes. Kekonomics sees content exhaustion as the psychological cost of permanent online production.
Cope
A dismissive term suggesting that someone’s argument, belief or emotional reaction is merely a way to deal with defeat or discomfort. In Kekonomics, “cope” turns psychology into meme warfare.
Copium
A fictional substance people are said to inhale when refusing to accept reality. It functions as an ironic diagnosis of denial.
Cringe Capital
Value generated by content that is embarrassing, awkward, or unintentionally ridiculous. In Kekonomics, cringe can become profitable when it attracts attention, mockery, or ironic appreciation.
Crowdsourced Capital
Value generated collectively by internet communities, often without monetary exchange.
Cultural Capital
The knowledge, taste, references, and symbolic skills that create social distinction. In Kekonomics, knowing how to read, use, or remix memes functions as cultural capital.
Cultural Commodification
The transformation of cultural products into commodities for sale.
Cultural Liquidity
The ability of cultural objects to move quickly between contexts, platforms, meanings, and markets. Memes are highly liquid because they can be endlessly adapted and repurposed.
D
Dankness
A quality associated with memes that are obscure, absurd, self-aware, or culturally saturated. In Kekonomics, dankness signals insider knowledge and memetic depth.
Datafied Laughter
The conversion of humor into measurable platform data: clicks, likes, shares, watch time, comments, and reactions. Kekonomics treats laughter as something that can be captured and monetized.
Dead Meme
A meme that has lost its cultural force through overuse, mainstream adoption, or platform exhaustion. In Kekonomics, dead memes can still retain archival, nostalgic, or ironic value.
Digital Barter
The exchange of non-monetary assets, like memes, for social capital or attention.
Digital Detritus
The leftover fragments of online culture: abandoned memes, screenshots, deleted posts, obsolete formats, and forgotten viral moments. Kekonomics sees this debris as part of the cultural infrastructure of the internet.
Discordianism
A parody religion and philosophical framework centered on chaos and absurdity.
Dog Whistle
A coded message that appears neutral to outsiders but carries specific meaning for an intended group. Memes often function as dog whistles because their meaning depends on context and subcultural literacy.
Doomer
A meme figure representing exhaustion, pessimism and resignation in the face of social, ecological or economic collapse.
Doomscrolling
The compulsive consumption of negative, alarming or emotionally draining content. In Kekonomics, doomscrolling is attention capture through despair.
E
Economic Absurdity
A concept describing how value in digital economies is often based on humor, irony, or randomness.
Edgelord
Someone who uses provocative, offensive or extreme statements to gain attention, signal detachment or test social boundaries.
Emojinomics
The economy of visual symbols, such as emojis and memes, that create emotional and cultural value.
Engagement Bait
Content designed primarily to provoke replies, arguments, shares or emotional reactions rather than communicate something meaningful.
Engagement Farming
The deliberate creation of content designed to provoke reactions, comments, shares, or outrage. In Kekonomics, engagement farming is one of the clearest examples of attention turned into value.
Engagement Trap
A post or meme designed to make users respond even when they recognize its manipulative nature. The trap works because awareness does not prevent participation.
Exhausted Irony
A mode of expression in which irony no longer creates distance, but becomes the default condition of communication. In Kekonomics, exhausted irony reflects the difficulty of sincerity in platform culture.
F
Failson Energy
A semi-ironic online label for cultivated incompetence, inherited comfort, soft nihilism or performative underachievement.
Fandom Capital
The social and economic value generated by intense fan communities. In Kekonomics, fandom capital can be converted into merchandise sales, platform traffic, symbolic status, or political energy.
Financialization
The expansion of financial logic into more areas of life and culture. Meme stocks, NFTs, crypto-assets, and speculative online communities are key Kekonomic examples.
Financialized Culture
The transformation of cultural objects into speculative assets. In Kekonomics, memes, NFTs, viral images, and online identities can all become part of this process.
For the Algorithm
A phrase used to acknowledge that a post, comment or action exists partly to satisfy platform logic rather than human communication.
G
Gamified Attention
The structuring of online interaction through scores, streaks, likes, badges, rankings, and metrics. Kekonomics sees this as a way of making attention measurable, addictive, and economically useful.
Gig Meme Economy
A decentralized economy where individuals create and distribute memes as freelance cultural products.
Go Viral
To spread rapidly across digital networks. In Kekonomics, virality is not only a cultural event but a mechanism of value production.
Going Goblin Mode
Rejecting productivity, self-optimization and social polish in favour of chaotic, indulgent or antisocial behaviour. In Kekonomics, goblin mode is both refusal and aesthetic.
Gramscian Capture
The slow occupation of cultural common sense through media, language, humour, and everyday symbols. In Kekonomics, memes can shift what feels normal before formal politics catches up.
Griftcore
A style or strategy in which online irony, identity, politics, or lifestyle branding is used to extract money, followers, or influence. Kekonomics treats griftcore as a parasitic form of meme monetization.
Grindset
A memeified ideology of constant self-improvement, productivity and entrepreneurial discipline. Often used sincerely and ironically at the same time.
H
Hate-Watching
Consuming content precisely because one dislikes it. In Kekonomics, hate-watching shows how opposition still generates value.
Hegemony
The dominance of certain ideas, values, and norms until they appear natural or self-evident. Kekonomics examines how memes both challenge and reproduce hegemonic structures.
Hopium
The hopeful counterpart to copium: irrational optimism maintained despite evidence of decline or failure.
Hot Take
A quick, provocative opinion designed to stand out in a crowded attention market.
Humor Arbitrage
Exploiting humor to create disproportionate value, such as turning a viral meme into a profitable NFT.
Hype Cycle
The rise, saturation, decline, and possible revival of a digital trend. In Kekonomics, memes often follow hype cycles similar to speculative markets.
Hyperstition
A concept from speculative philosophy referring to fictional ideas that become reality through belief and action.
I
Ick
A sudden, often irrational feeling of repulsion toward someone’s behaviour, style or presence. Online, the “ick” turns minor social discomfort into shareable judgment.
Impression Management
The strategic presentation of the self in social situations. In platform culture, posting, irony, profile aesthetics, and meme choice all become forms of impression management.
Influence Arbitrage
The conversion of cultural credibility, irony, or niche knowledge into money, status, or institutional access.
Internet Monetization
The process of generating revenue through online content.
Ironic Detachment
A mode of participation where users engage with something while pretending not to care. Kekonomics depends heavily on this unstable position.
Irony
A central mode of expression in Kekonomics, representing detachment, humor, and a layered approach to meaning.
Irony Poisoning
A condition in which continuous ironic detachment makes sincere belief or communication difficult. In Kekonomics, irony poisoning is both cultural defense mechanism and market condition.
It’s Giving
A phrase used to categorize the vibe or social meaning of something.
K
Kek
A deity-like figure originating from internet meme culture, often depicted as a green frog (Pepe).
Kekonomics
A satirical economic framework that highlights the interplay of memes, digital culture, and absurdity in the creation of value.
L
L Posting
Publicly taking a loss, embarrassing oneself or being perceived as defeated in online discourse.
Larp Economy
An economy built around performative identities, fictional roles, ideological cosplay, and online personas. In Kekonomics, larping can produce real social and economic effects.
Liquidity of Meaning
The ability of a sign, meme, or phrase to shift meaning depending on context. Kekonomics depends on this liquidity: the same meme can be joke, critique, commodity, signal, and weapon.
Lore
The accumulated backstory, references, conflicts and myths around a person, community, meme or platform event. In Kekonomics, lore increases symbolic value.
Low-Effort Posting
Content that appears minimal, lazy or careless but can still become valuable through timing, context or absurdity.
M
Main Character Syndrome
The tendency to frame one’s life as if it were a film, narrative or personal brand. Online, this becomes a mode of self-mythologizing.
Mainstream Capture
The process by which subcultural symbols are absorbed by brands, media, politics, or institutions. In Kekonomics, mainstream capture often marks the moment a meme begins to lose subcultural power but gain commercial value.
Manufactured Consensus
The production of apparent agreement through media, repetition, platform amplification, or coordinated messaging. Memes can help manufacture consensus by making certain ideas feel obvious or widely shared.
Meme Arbitrage
The exploitation of viral trends by translating them into merchandise, NFTs, or other monetizable formats.
Meme Capital
The symbolic or actual value generated by memes within digital economies.
Meme Decay
The loss of force that occurs when a meme is overused, misunderstood, or detached from its original context. Meme decay is part of the lifecycle of digital value.
Meme Derivative
A variation, remix, or financialized extension of an existing meme. In Kekonomics, derivatives can include merchandise, NFTs, spin-off formats, or ideological adaptations.
Meme Futures
A speculative concept where the future popularity of memes is traded like financial derivatives.
Meme Laundering
The process by which extreme, absurd, or marginal ideas are softened through humor and repetition until they become acceptable or marketable.
Metamodernism
A cultural movement that oscillates between modernist sincerity and postmodern irony.
Metrics Fetishism
The tendency to treat likes, shares, impressions, views, and follower counts as direct measures of value. In Kekonomics, metrics become the visible surface of deeper attention extraction.
Microtransactions
Small, frequent financial transactions often used in digital platforms and games.
Mid
A dismissive term for something considered average, overhyped or lacking distinction. In Kekonomics, “mid” is a compact form of status judgment.
Monetized Irony
The process of turning ironic content into a revenue stream.
N
NPC (Non-Player Character)
A meme symbolizing conformity and lack of individuality.
NPC Energy
A perceived lack of originality, autonomy or self-awareness. In Kekonomics, NPC language is used to mock conformity while often producing its own conformity.
Networked Individualism
A social condition in which individuals are connected through flexible, shifting networks rather than stable communities. Kekonomics operates in this world of temporary alliances, swarms, and micro-publics.
Niche Fame
A form of recognition limited to specific online communities. In Kekonomics, niche fame can still produce real social and economic capital.
O
Overposting
The compulsive production of content beyond communicative necessity. In Kekonomics, overposting becomes both symptom and strategy.
P
Platform Capitalism
An economic model where platforms generate value by hosting user content.
Platform Feudalism
A condition in which users produce value on privately owned digital infrastructures while having little control over the conditions of circulation.
Post-Ironic Value
Value created when audiences cannot clearly distinguish between sincerity, irony, parody, and belief. Kekonomics thrives in this ambiguity.
Post-Scarcity Humor
The abundance of memes creates a condition where humor becomes the main currency for attention.
Post-Truth
A condition in which emotional resonance, identity, and repetition become more influential than factual accuracy. Kekonomics is deeply tied to post-truth dynamics because memes often work through feeling before verification.
Posting Praxis
The idea that posting is not merely communication but a form of action, positioning, signaling, and cultural intervention.
R
Recursive Irony
Irony that reflects on its own ironic status, making it impossible to determine whether something is joke, critique, belief, or performance.
Red Pill/Blue Pill
A metaphor representing the choice between harsh truth and comforting illusion.
Remix Value
The value created when existing cultural material is altered, recontextualized, and redistributed. In Kekonomics, remixing is a primary mode of production.
Reply Guy
A person who repeatedly responds to someone’s posts, often in a needy, argumentative or parasocial way.
S
Shitcoin
A derogatory term for low-value cryptocurrencies.
Shitposting
The act of posting deliberately low-quality or nonsensical content online.
Simulacrum
A term from Baudrillard, describing a copy without an original.
Sincerity Premium
The added value that sincerity gains in an environment saturated by irony. In Kekonomics, sincerity becomes rare and therefore potentially valuable.
Slay
A term of approval, often exaggerated or ironic, used to mark confidence, style or performative success.
Slop
Low-quality, mass-produced digital content generated for attention, clicks, or platform presence. In Kekonomics, slop represents the industrialization of cultural noise.
SnakeByte
A fictional entity within Kekonomics representing the intersection of meme culture and digital activism.
Social Capital
The value derived from social networks and relationships.
Soft Power
The ability to shape preferences through culture, attraction, and influence rather than force. Meme culture can function as soft power when symbols, jokes, and aesthetics shift perception.
Soyjak / Soy Face
A meme image used to ridicule exaggerated enthusiasm, consumerist excitement and perceived lack of masculine energy. In Kekonomics, the Soyjak marks the point where enthusiasm becomes suspicious: every fandom, purchase, belief or reaction can be reframed as proof of capture by the market, the platform or the dominant ideology.
Speculative Absurdity
Investment in seemingly meaningless digital assets purely for speculative purposes.
Status Anxiety
The fear of losing social position or failing to appear relevant. Online, this is intensified by metrics, visibility, follower counts, and the constant demand to react.
Stonks
A meme-based misspelling of 'stocks,' used to parody financial markets.
T
Tokenized Culture
The conversion of cultural objects into digital tokens or tradable units. NFTs are the most obvious example.
Trend Extraction
The process by which brands, creators, or platforms identify emerging cultural trends and convert them into monetizable formats.
V
Virality
The rapid spread of content across digital platforms.
Virality Capital
The potential of content to generate widespread attention.
Virtual Scarcity
The artificial creation of rarity in digital spaces, often through NFTs.
W
W Posting
Publicly taking a win or being perceived as victorious in online discourse.
Weaponized Irony
The strategic use of irony to spread ideas while avoiding accountability. In Kekonomics, weaponized irony allows content to remain ambiguous: joke, belief, propaganda, or all three.
Web3 Absurdism
The strange overlap between speculative finance, digital ownership, meme culture, and utopian technological language. Kekonomics treats Web3 absurdism as a key example of economic fantasy becoming infrastructure.
We’re So Back / It’s Over
A recurring emotional cycle of exaggerated hope and despair. In Kekonomics, this functions almost like a market indicator for online morale.
Wojak
A popular meme character used to express a wide range of emotions and situations.
Z
Zombie Meme
A meme that appears dead but periodically returns through nostalgia, irony, or new contexts. Zombie memes show that online cultural value rarely disappears completely.
Zoomer Nihilism
A form of ironic pessimism associated with younger internet culture, combining humour, exhaustion, absurdity and low expectations for the future.