Making sense? The structure and meanings of digital memetic nonsense

This paper offers the first systematic analysis of ‘digital memetic nonsense’– clusters of seemingly meaningless digital texts imitated and circulated by many participants. We evaluated this phenomenon through two conceptual lenses: theories on nonsense in the pre-digital age and the techno-cultural conditions that facilitate its contemporary formations. A grounded analysis of 139 nonsensical memes led to their typology into 5 genres: linguistic silliness, embodied silliness, pastiche, dislocations, and interruptions. In each of these genres, we show how digital nonsense may potentially serve as a social glue that bonds members of phatic, image-oriented, communities. If, in the past, nonsense was depicted in both intellectual terms, as defiant deconstruction of meaning, and in playful/social terms, its current memetic manifestations lean heavily toward the latter. Rather than being a reflection on ‘referential meaning’, digital nonsense is analyzed as a generative source of ‘affective meaning’ that marks the formation of social connections preceding cognitive understanding. We conclude by highlighting the potentially subversive implications of this shift for participatory barriers and community membership.