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What does 'eat the rich' mean to you?
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this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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It's a meme designed to express dissatisfaction with income equality and the desire to fix it. What isn't clear to me is what qualifies as "rich". Because a US based entry-level fast food worker is at the 50th percentile of richest people in the world by income, after accounting for cost of living and other regional inequality.
It's also pretty clear from studies that everyone in the top 30% of the richest in the world will need to give up a lot of our privileges if we're going to address climate change, and I don't think people realise how rich they actually are. https://wid.world/income-comparator/ uses some of the latest research to help you find out, it's definitely worth a look.
Its from the French revolution you silly person
If the question OP asked was about the origin of the phrase, your reply would be a great starting point as a top level comment.
Its not a meme, its a historical quotes. Unless your saying you see it as a meme, which to me a meme is silly and easily thrown away
Yeah if you're interested in origins of a phrase's meaning, I think you' better look into what a "meme" actually originally is before criticizing its useage here.
I'm using the original definition of the word meme: "a unit of cultural information spread by imitation". Meme as a word doesn't imply that it's a comedic image macro on the internet, but I appreciate that the more modern slang usage might have made that confusing for you.
In 50 years if "meme" evolves in the general dialect to have these connotations you pointed out I'll feel better about it
It started from what @fiat_lux defined.
It's ironic that you want people to recognise the roots of "eat the rich" but you're unwilling to recognise the roots and wider meaning of "meme".
Its more to do with the connotation of calling something a meme.
Maybe I am out of the loop but the description for a meme that was previously given has never occupied my mind whilst seeing a meme.
Eat the rich with the laymen's understanding of a meme does not fit the perceived definition.
Where as eat the rich and its evolution still has the same connotation as it had when first spoken, most likely due to it be a quite with historical meaning.
I am wrong with the given definition but I still see there being understandable confusion and a need for meme to evolve for it to used without confusion.
No it's really a very similar situation - meme was coined in 1976 (Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene) and was pretty widely known.
Internet memes were thus named because they are literally a subset of memes. So for people who know the wider meaning of the term it's still got the same connotations. Calling internet memes "memes" isn't problematic for us.
What's happened to you is kind of like when people say "animal" but they're only thinking of mammals. In most contexts the missing scope isn't noticeable.
Which is understandable but going after someone for not knowing about the French revolution is a lot like going after someone for not knowing about meme theory.
And how much can we supply in resources to the bottom 50% by taking even from just the top 1000 richest people?
Maybe enough to make a huge difference. To be clear, I have zero problem with the concept of wealth redistribution to better achieve some kind of equitable outcome (that ideally isn't at the cost of the environment, which is the big reason that the top global richest will need to give up a lot of travel ).
I just think a lot of the people who are keen for "eat the rich", especially in its more violent forms, may not realise they're on the menu themselves when the issue is looked at from a global all-of-humanity perspective. And, I encourage people to really think about who and what is included or excluded in the definitions of "rich", what level of variation is acceptable to them, and what a sustainable living situation even looks like for the world's population if we had total equality. They're all very hard questions that I don't have an answer to either.