A satirical framework for understanding the modern digital economy
Kekonomics is a satirical framework for understanding the modern digital economy after the meme. It explores how humor, absurdity and internet culture have become real drivers of attention, value and influence.
The model itself is set out on the homepage →At the centre of Kekonomics is the attention economy. Online value is no longer produced only through labour, goods or services, but through circulation, affect, repetition and visibility.
Memes operate as small engines of attention. They are copied, adapted, misunderstood, weaponized, monetized and forgotten. Their value lies precisely in this instability. They mean too much and too little at the same time.
The term Kek comes from online meme culture and is associated with the chaotic, ironic and unstable creativity of internet communities. In Kekonomics, memes are not treated as trivial distractions, but as cultural and economic artefacts.
They act as a form of cultural currency. They entertain, provoke and momentarily create meaning in a fragmented digital world. They spread not because they are stable, but because they mutate.
The meme is not limited to anonymous users. A chainsaw on a conference stage, a sports car sent into orbit or a phrase like “alternative facts” follows the same route, only it starts at the top. Kekonomics calls these memetic acts, and records them in the Register.
Meme culture often mocks the systems that dominate contemporary life: capitalism, branding, politics, productivity, identity and success. Yet those same gestures of ridicule are quickly absorbed by the systems they target.
Even refusal becomes content.
Kekonomics is therefore both a joke and not a joke.
Kekonomics.com is an initiative of NoSignal, an independent platform for publications, artistic production and cultural experiments. Its projects take many forms: from essays, fiction and experimental publications to exhibitions, interventions and collaborations.
The website functions as a place for essays, fragments, visual material, references and related objects connected to the broader Kekonomics project.
Research on this site is published under the name of the Institute for Applied Kekonomics: a fictional research body that takes the meme economy more seriously than it takes itself.
As part of this project, NoSignal will release Kekonomics: Memes, Attention, and Value Creation in the Digital World, an introductory book on the principles of this satirical economic model. Written between analysis and ironic detachment, it serves as a primer for readers interested in meme culture, digital capitalism and the increasingly absurd mechanics of online value.
Memes are not just jokes. They are symptoms, tools and commodities at once. They reveal how people process information overload, economic instability and cultural fragmentation through humor, irony and repetition.
At the same time, they show how quickly authentic online behaviour can be captured by platforms and transformed into data, engagement and profit. This duality — resistance and absorption, creativity and extraction, nonsense and value — is the terrain of Kekonomics.
Whether you are a digital native, an internet anthropologist, an overthinker, a shitposter or simply curious about the mechanics of meme magic, Kekonomics invites you to explore the chaotic, ironic and surprisingly influential forces shaping online life.