Peer-reviewed* analysis at the intersection of meme theory, attention economics, and digital absurdity.
*peer-reviewed by the internetKekonomics operates under a set of laws that, although you might call them absurd, are essential to its functioning. These laws govern attention, value creation, and the very flow of digital economies.
Memes have the power to influence reality. What starts as a joke can have unexpected, real-world consequences.
“Just meme harder; reality bends if you believe.”
Where order falls short, new ideas emerge. The greatest innovations come from the most unpredictable, chaotic circumstances.
“Don't overplan; just do random stuff until you're a genius.”
The world is so absurd that only irony can truly reflect its nature. What is presented as a joke can reveal deep truths.
“Just kidding, unless?”
Ideas, culture, and even people can be reduced to memes. Those who don't see the meme remain Non-Player Characters.
“Press F to pay respects to your NPC life.”
What initially seems funny can have serious consequences. The power of humor and satire can be both constructive and destructive.
“Just laugh; the world will follow. No pressure.”
Progress sometimes requires dismantling. By disrupting the current structure, you make room for something new and better.
“Burn it down, build it worse, repeat until freedom.”
Every post is a seed planted in the chaos of the internet. Shitposts are the wild fruits, capable of causing unexpected cultural change.
“Farm those shitposts; it's harvest season, baby.”
The following works form the intellectual backbone of Kekonomics. We didn't make this up. Well, we did. But these people explained why it works.
Boorstin coined the pseudo-event: a happening that exists only so it can be covered. Press conferences, photo opportunities, product launches. Sixty years later it walks on stage holding a chainsaw.
Debord argued that authentic social life has been replaced by its representation. Replace "spectacle" with "timeline" and you have the attention economy. He was right and he was early.
The original framework for understanding copies without originals. Every meme is a simulacrum — detached from reality, yet shaping it. Baudrillard predicted meme culture forty years early.
Postman warned that public discourse would take the form of television: short, visual, entertaining, and unable to sustain an argument. He was describing the evening news. He also described the timeline.
Fisher described a world in which it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Critique arrives pre-packaged as product; he called it precorporation. Every ironic meme about late capitalism is evidence. So is this website.
The oscillation between sincerity and irony that defines our era. Kekonomics exists in this exact tension: the joke is real, the analysis is satirical, and both are true.
Speculative philosophy at its most unhinged. Land's concept of hyperstition — fictions that make themselves real — is literally the mechanism behind meme magic. Law I, proven.
The definitive analysis of how platforms extract value from user interactions. Every meme you create is unpaid labor for Mark Zuckerberg. Srnicek quantified the joke.
An examination of how online culture wars shaped politics. Nagle mapped the terrain where irony became ideology and shitposting became praxis. Essential field research.
Zuboff showed how platforms harvest behavioural data and sell predictions of what users will do next. Every laugh is logged. The Kek Composite Index on our homepage does the same thing, for free.
The Institute for Applied Kekonomics is established. The steps above are combined into a single model, and the model is put to work.
See the model →Compiled by the Institute for Applied Kekonomics. Every work on this list is real, and every one of them warned about something this website now does.