The connection between memes, the internet and the divine. It's more profound than you think.
What could rage-face comics and viral videos possibly have to do with God? The answer can be found, in part, in the story of a preacher named William J. Seymour, who in April 1906 held a meeting at a run-down Episcopal church in the ghetto of Los Angeles. "Brother Seymour" stood behind a makeshift pulpit made from two large wooden shoe boxes stacked sideways with the openings facing him, buried his head inside the top box, and began to pray. At times, Seymour and others in the room would fall to the floor in what looked almost like a fit of epilepsy, singing in a strange language no one could identify.
As word of Seymour's meetings spread quickly through the city, people spoke of miracles. They told of skeptics appearing, hoping to debunk the preacher, only to wrestle with invisible demons and awake convinced of their sins, ready to accept the Lord into their hearts.
A man named A.G. Osterberg who attended one of Seymour's meetings at the time described what many held up as proof of the divine: "Especially did the enchanting strains of the so-called "Heavenly Choir," or hymns sung under the evident direction of the Holy Spirit both as to words and tune, thrill my whole being." Osterberg was describing what linguists refer to as glossolalia, more commonly known as "speaking in tongues." Seymour's meetings sparked what was later named the Azusa Street Revival, giving birth to the modern Pentecostal movement, which traces the origins of speaking in tongues back to the New Testament. In fact, the word Pentecostal has roots in the city of Pentecost, the setting of one of the first recorded instances of glossolalia.
As later scholars and linguists would discover, glossolalia is hardly exclusive to Christianity, and it does not, even by the loosest standards, qualify as a form of communication — it’s nonsense masquerading as speech. Neurological studies do appear to support claims of heightened self-awareness and loss of language control that subjects point to as evidence of the divine. The practice appears in populations ranging from Pagan Greeks to the Zulu Amandiki and the Brazilian Umbanda cult, popping up sporadically and independently throughout history among geographically and culturally divergent populations, spreading like a virus.
In other words, glossolalia is an early historical example of a meme.
In January of 2010, a little over a century after Seymour began holding his meetings in LA, a man named Paul Vasquez uploaded a video to YouTube under the username Hungrybear9562, "Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Double Rainbow 1-8-10." Consisting of a single-take, first-person shot of a supernumary rainbow in Vasquez's backyard in Yosemite Park, it’s been viewed over 30 million times. What makes the video so compelling is not the double rainbow. No, the video went viral because Vasquez spends an entire three and a half minutes absolutely freaking out, repeating the phrases "Oh my god", "What does it mean?", "It's so intense", with pure, unadulterated elation.
