Resisting climate imaginaries: future compass memes as combinatory mechanisms for imagining otherwise

The climate crisis is simultaneously a crisis of the imagination, signaling a cultural failure to comprehend and contest unfolding ecological destruction. Conventional media representations of climate futures, including catastrophic documentaries, corporate sustainability narratives, and even climate activism imagery, often inadvertently fuel anxiety or consumerist complacency. Online communities offer alternative spaces of cultural production that can challenge dominant political narratives of the climate crisis. This article analyzes the memetic practices of the subreddit r/futurecompasses to examine how subcultural actors train the political imagination. Future compass memes (FCMs) are dense collages of images and cultural references that juxtapose divergent ontologies, ideologies, and political strategies within the format of a compass, disrupting fixed visions of the future. Rather than offering singular projections, FCMs invite viewers to navigate conflicting expectations, desires, and anxieties. Drawing on Vilém Flusser's theory of technical images as mosaic assemblages, we argue that FCMs are combinatory devices that reconfigure visual fragments into speculative constellations. Like photography, which both disciplines and enables resistance, FCMs operate as laboratories for alternative visions, reprogramming perception and expanding the range of imaginable futures in the face of the climate crisis. We conclude by reflecting on the broader utility of Flusser’s theory for analyzing the aesthetic and political potential of digital visual culture.