Cory in The Abyss & The Poet's Meme

Cory in The Abyss, scrolling, gives me the sensation of a long scream of desperation; anxiety; tender moments played through a frustration so immense that they conglomerate into a cultural hellstate. As the Blackness in our culture resides in nothing; as sex is parodied long past the point of an actual sex life; these things are generally dealt with humor, to make the mixture universally palatable; but as this humor is an absurdist humor, the deeper faults of comedy come to the surface, to be solidified into meme.

I think Cory memes form a cogent narrative across the page, as compared to the general splay of something like imgur.com. "Cory" is one particular creator who does have a tone and a business; his message is pop-art burlesque, basically, carnivalesque parody of what's new, what's political, what's lightly taboo. This breaks down in some points to semi-poetic noncommentary, a collage of various cultural bright points into a dream or nightmare upon waking. It's very Lisa Frank.

Cultural significance of The Abyss = the cultural significance of Lisa Frank= image making, with the intent to market. Essentially Cory is "on blast." He's attempting to produce something relatable. Thus his memes are for their own sake. That there is a significant part of cultural commentary in the mix may very well be there just for the appeal. It seems hard to isolate.

Lisa Frank

Cory in The Abyss 

"Cory" himself's a poet. He's going to apply to grad school for poetry. As his greatest success is perhaps in something not-at-all poetry there is perhaps a lot to be said; I would like to say that the cross-cultural connections of poets are particularly potent for being imaginative and for existing in a space where the current culture has to be entirely fled. I would like to embrace "the new" wherever it comes up and I believe that memes as combination of collage and cellular distribution are "new." As a model for poetry they, I think, accomplish some of poetry's greater goals. That being said I feel a great hesitance when confronted with The Abyss; something feels shallow. Where's the next step. A missing depth in the memes. Still searching.

***POETRYBURGH'S VISION FOR THE UNIVERSAL VIRTUAL FUTURE: ***

1,000 people out of work will still do something and if it's not crime it might still look obscene. Let's say goodbye to the era of workmanly cause-and-effect and embrace the era of confounding cultural astigmatism where attention is everything and love evaporates in the deep-settled mines of a forgotten past. Nostalgia overflowing essentially into substance. This before or perhaps after the Matrix gets ahold of us, the dulling effect first thought practical seen to be overridden by enormous leechlike neural networks of blazing paranoia. Can culture itself be reduced to a pure, homeostatic oil? At least in the form of latticed image this seems possible.

~poetryburgh