Once the Internet had introduced us to the concept of the meme, we started seeing them everywhere. Mostly because they had always been there and the word “meme” hadn’t become a, well, meme yet.
Memes are ideas, actions and often images that spread widely and rapidly because they resonate with people, or better yet, irritate other people. Teenagers are frequent vectors for such viral cultural affectations. [See also: well, duh!]
POWER OF PIXELS
Farming has its own memes. Some we could let die of their own irrelevance; others might need stakes through their pixels.
Here is my top candidate for immediate memicide: Combines-Migrating-South.
Face it. These pictures have gone from gee-whiz to suspiciously overcompensating, not unlike muscle cars or moustaches. On the other hand, I’ll bet you could rack up a zillion views for those same combines to be following AI-programmed Drunk Pac-Man trajectories with near misses and cliff-hanging unloading episodes.
This meme was aggravated by a brief period when drones were The Things That Would Change Farming Forever.
Any self-respecting operator had to post flyover video of the Big New Combine presumably to document their credit score. Luckily many of the drones were subsequently devoured by the same Big New Combines at night in a cornfield, and the pandemic shortage crimped the supply of new machines. Nobody posts flyovers of ancient 2-year-old models.
THE DOMED SILO
My second candidate for retirement is the domed silo. While we have grudgingly begun to let go of the tricycle tractor meme, farmers who have never chopped silage or tried to get a frozen unloader going still slap this image on their checks and caps.
Granted we don’t have good replacement images — farm shops are indistinguishable from hockey rinks today — but the silo image is a media virus in need of a vaccine.
While suggesting farmers re-meme our industry, I realize it is time to say goodbye to my own outdated symbols: all things Star Trek. The jokes have grown weary; the references have dwindled to wistful shadows. It’s a meme unraveled from memory.
Time to boldly go away.
