Mimetic Stocks, Not Meme Stocks

On memes and the generation of mimetic desire

The stock market isn’t irrational, it’s mimetic.

What we now see clearly happening in a few special assets (termed “meme” stocks)—movement fueling more movement—is merely an amplification of what has always happened in the stock market: price action matters because it is, above all, a reflection of what other people want; and what other people want affects what other people want. And that is a product of mimesis, not memes. 

The great social theorist René Girard (1923-2015) speaks prophetically to us from beyond the grave in the writings he left behind. No thinker in the twentieth century has more accurately diagnosed the pathologies of the modern world. His central discovery was mimetic desire: the idea that people desire things mimetically—that is, imitatively—not intrinsically. This is especially true when the thing is totally abstract, like a stock. 

According to Girard, we don’t choose the objects of our desires independently. There is always a model of desire involved: a third per…