Socrates Café – Unbothered. Moisturized. On a Plane. Clueless. Flourishing.

🧠 Socrates Café – Unbothered. Moisturized. On a Plane. Clueless. Flourishing.
📱 Meme Culture, Irony, and the Ethics of Representation
📍 Hideaway Café, Chiang Mai
🗓️ Saturday, July 26th
🕛 12:00 PM – 2:45 PM
🍽️ Minimum spend: 250 THB on food and drinks
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Discussion Overview:
This week’s discussion begins with a viral meme: a candid photo of environmental activist Greta Thunberg seated on a plane, overlaid with the caption:
> “Unbothered. Moisturized. On a Plane. Clueless. Flourishing.”
This image—widely shared without context—invites serious questions about how internet culture reinterprets public figures, flattens identity into aesthetic, and detaches meaning through irony. Greta is no longer speaking, protesting, or leading; she is reduced to a meme persona.
We’ll critically examine the philosophical and ethical dimensions of such memeification.
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Core Questions for Discussion:
What happens when a public figure is turned into a meme without reference to their agency or message?
Are memes the new mythology—archetypes born in irony instead of reverence?
Can memes carry truth, or are they inherently corrosive to truth?
What is lost when the individual becomes a symbol?
Do memes strip away dignity, or can they function as cultural critique?
Where does irony end and nihilism begin?
When does satire become cruelty? Can memes ethically exist in the public domain without consent?
Do we risk eroding meaning when everything becomes a joke?
Does irony today function as a defense mechanism—against meaning, against suffering, against connection?
We’ll engage thinkers like Baudrillard (simulation), Kierkegaard (irony and selfhood), Arendt (the banality of spectacle), and Han (the erosion of depth in digital culture).
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🪑 Max 20 participants – RSVP encouraged
🎤 Open-circle format – one voice at a time, all perspectives welcome
📚 Deep minds. No surface takes.