👋 Hi fellow dumdums,
You know that moment when you open your phone “just to check the weather” and suddenly it’s fifteen minutes later, you’ve watched three raccoon-cooking tutorials, and the actual forecast is still a mystery? Meanwhile the useful link your friend sent — something about tax credits or life-saving brake recalls — has already slipped down the timeline’s trapdoor.
Those vanishing, blink-and-they’re-gone ideas are anti-memes. Information that actively dodges attention — or gets blocked by your brain’s own pop-up blocker — no matter how important it is. Writer-researcher Nadia Asparouhova spent an entire book hunting these Houdini thoughts in Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading (digital out now, soft-cover sneaking in early June).
Her biggest reveal: the attention economy works like an immune system. If a thought is too dull, taboo, or impossible to meme-ify, algorithms and neurons alike slap on an invisibility cloak.
The Forgotten Fax
In 1843, Scottish clock-maker Alexander Bain sketched a gizmo that could send images over telegraph wires — a proto-fax. It worked. But his peers labeled it “parlor-trick nonsense,” filed it under nobody asked for this, and went back to inventing better paperweights. The first commercial fax didn’t ship until 1924 — eight decades of missed memes. Bain’s machine was a textbook anti-meme. Too technical, too ahead of its incentive curve, and (crucially) impossible to explain at the pub.
Dumb takeaway?
A truly radical idea often shows up dressed as a malfunction. If everyone keeps nodding politely and changing the subject, you might be sitting on the next fax — just eighty years early.
The Metric-System Standoff
America has been flirting with the metric system since 1793 — like that guy who keeps promising he’ll read Moby-Dick once his kombucha ferments. Congress passed a few “sure, call me” bills, presidents offered half-hearted shrugs, and somewhere along the way a pack of polite pirates (yes, really) sank the French envoy’s one-of-a-kind meter stick, because nothing says manifest destiny like dunking a ruler.
Fast-forward two centuries and we’re still measuring highway exits in “three Beyoncé songs” or “half a Costco.” Why? Because kilometer feels suspiciously like it studied abroad and now insists on pronouncing croissant correctly. Add a cultural identity landmine (ie, something that sounds too taboo) to mind-numbing decimals (ie, something that sounds confusing) and voilà — the metric anti-meme slips into permanent witness protection, sipping espresso with Celsius and whispering, “Someday they’ll appreciate us… right?”
The Great Bidet Snub
Legend says the bidet was born in 17-century France so nobles could leave the throne feeling fresher than a croissant at dawn. Four hundred years later, Americans still treat it like a French dare: “You want me to aim water where?”
During the 2020 toilet-paper apocalypse, sales of backyard chickens spiked before most households even considered installing a bidet attachment that costs less than dinner at Olive Garden. Why hasn’t the wash-n-spray revolution caught on?
It’s taboo – Bathroom talk is the conversational third rail; we’d rather overshare about colonics than admit we’re curious.
It sounds complictaed – The install instructions mention “T-valves” and “gallons per minute,” and suddenly scrolling TikTok feels productive.
It’s boring – It’s literally plumbing. Even the word “bidet” sounds like the party guest who corrects your pronunciation of “charcuterie.”
Result: a cheap, hygienic, eco-friendly upgrade sits in witness protection while we keep endorsing the world’s least ergonomic origami contest.
Moral: A life-improving idea can drown in awkward giggles and mild DIY math — leaving culture high, dry, and suspiciously chafed.
Dumb Word of the Day
Lethologica (lee-thuh-LAH-jick-uh) — that maddening moment when a perfectly good word tiptoes to the edge of your tongue… then BASE-jumps into the void.
Why it’s an anti-meme poster-child:
Lethologica is a micro–anti-meme your own brain performs in real time. The idea (the missing word) is right there, yet some cognitive bouncer shoves it back outside before it can mingle, spread, or sparkle in conversation. It’s a live demonstration of Nadia’s thesis: information can be blocked not by censors or algorithms, but by our built-in “forget me” reflex.
Proof in one absurd—but coherent—sentence:
“Mid-toast at my cousin’s wedding, lethologica hijacked ‘matrimony’, so I congratulated the happy couple on their lifelong commitment to ‘mutual warranty coverage.’”
(Speech rescued, anti-meme reluctantly decloaked.)
(should you choose to accept it)
Dumb Challenge of the Week:
The Anti-Meme Scavenger Hunt
Open any feed and scroll until you skip a headline without blinking. Screenshot that slippery sucker — prime anti-meme suspect.
Pinpoint why you swerved. Too dull, taboo, or brain-melty? Summarize in one savage sentence.
Rewrite the headline so your chaos-loving group chat would tap it instantly. Example: “Municipal Zoning Update” → “The Secret Rule Deciding Whether Your Block Gets Taco Trucks.”
Drop your new headline—no context — into three different chats. If at least one friend bites, you’ve uncloaked an anti-meme. If no one bites… congratulations, you’ve mapped a master-class vanisher.
Pro-tip: need your own half-baked idea to marinate in peace? Hide it behind one of those three cloaks until it’s ready to roar.
Run this drill daily for a week. By Friday you’ll own a private field guide to ideas the timeline keeps forgetting — and a smuggling kit to sneak them back in (or keep yours hidden).
🎤 YOUR TURN
Spotted a thought that keeps slipping every conversation? Hit reply and confess. Best “vanishing idea” wins a signed copy of Dumbify and a custom Post-it that says Remember the Thing You Forgot.
Stay unforgettable,
David
P.S. Know someone who wanders into rooms then forgets why? Forward this — they’re clearly living on the antimemetic frontier.
Dumbify: Dumb Ideas, Delivered Weekly (You’re Welcome).
