Close-Reading Distracted Boyfriend

summary of researches so far

Here’s a talk I gave on my thesis in its broad outlines, and where we’re at with it now. It’s about the Distracted Boyfriend meme, which I’m studying in-depth. Parts from this Substack figure into the larger thing, and I’ll also post pieces of the thesis as I finish them. If you’ve got any suggestions or criticisms, share them please!

The “scan” in this title was something I wondered a long time about. I mean to use it in both senses of “scan”: when you scan something you’re buying at the grocery store, you find out its value and how it fits into a database. When you scan a poem, you count the syllables, find the caesurae, and mark out the rhyme structure to determine how the poem manipulates all the pieces inside of it to make a meaning. I think memes are just as meaningful as poems, and just as valuable as groceries.

I’ve worked for two years for Know Your Meme, the internet’s o…