So many new ideas came up to me as I was finishing this chapter.

There will probably be new chapters soon. I don't know yet.

Enjoy the reading!

Chapter 2: Don't think, just laugh!

- Come in now! - Lisa called back, and Lincoln immediately entered the room. The door closed behind him almost instantly.

Out of the changes Lincoln noticed when he entered the room, the first thing that caught his eye was the empty table where Lisa used to conduct her experiments on. There were always some different flasks on it as well as the chemicals and a microscope, through which she was always exploring something. However, all of this was missing that day. The window in the room was shut, the curtains were closed too, and instead of a direct sunlight the whole room was illuminated just by the light of the ceiling lamp. Also, two chairs had appeared in the room, and one of them was near Lily's crib, while the other one was near Lisa's desk. Lincoln realized their purpose at once, but was a little puzzled by their pretty small number.

- Sit down, and let our first lecture happen today, - said Lisa, who was sitting next to her desk on a chair. At first Lincoln intended to ask her why there were so few of the present session's members, but then changed his mind and just sat on the other chair. The «lecture» began.

- Let's dispense with unnecessary preface, because you are the only participant of our project so far, and you don't need long narrations now, - Lisa started her speech, - To be honest, I've been thinking about it for a long time, but I haven't found a topic that would suit our first lecture as best as possible. Let me tell you briefly the whole point instead.

- Go on! - Lincoln agreed to her proposal, mentally flipping through his future comic book. He began listening to her.

- Why did I actually start this club? Because right now is the best time for it. It's the middle of 2017, the height of summer, when various trends like the mass transition of television to streaming platforms, the popularization of social networks around the world and in the United States among others, are already emerging or just beginning to emerge. Also, we can note the beginning of the spread of cryptocurrency, active globalization in almost all of the countries.

Lincoln didn't understand a single word of what Lisa just said. What kind of nonsense was she talking about? Is it something too scientific and complicated again as she loved it? He thought, looking at Lisa with confusion. She only sighed and rolled her eyes in response, but instead of explaining what she had already said, she gave a simpler example:

- Of all the changes that have recently taken place this year, the following phenomena are particularly noteworthy: the popularity of completely stupid things like memes, fidget spinners, and «challenges» of all kinds. Well, that's what you're good at, Lincoln!

- Yeah, - he said, and then he involuntarily burst out laughing, - I'm a pretty good fan of memes, I can't help but laugh at every meme I see! But what does this have to do with you opening the club, and why are all these things stupid?

An interesting topic came to her mind, and it could finally be mentioned and developed in the course of her conversation with Lincoln. She smiled, looking at her brother slyly, and replied in a courteous tone:

- I will get to that point eventually. For now, I will just say that for the last ten years the emphasis has been on nothing else but information technologies and the young generation. Of course, it would be quite foolish not to pay attention to this trend and not to start preparing for it. Our slogan is: «Praemonitus, praemunitus!» which basically means «Forewarned is forearmed!» in Latin. Consequently, the more necessary and useful information we have, the more useful it will be to us and the stronger our immunity to all sorts of manipulations, like the same silly memes and challenges will develop. In the process of my lectures, our conversations, your questions and my answers, you will learn to think with your head and make your own decisions.

Okay, that was weird - Lincoln thought. His second youngest sister Lisa would teach him, Lincoln, to think with his head? To be independent? What is he, a child? Is he younger than Lisa? It doesn't matter. But what does this have to do with memes? They are not for philosophy, but for the sake of a joke, to take a break from life, and are so much fun!

So many questions appeared in his head that he was confused. Lincoln had yet to understand the meaning of the words that Lisa would tell him, but now he was somewhat skeptical of her story about the club's goals. They were not credible. Lisa noticed this from the slightly frowning expression on his face, but remained calm. This reaction was exactly what she expected from him. It's fine, it will pass away soon! Just remember to keep his interests in mind, don't overload him with too much information, and give him a comic book once in a while, Lisa thought. It sounded as simple as it looked in her mind.

- Lincoln, do you have any questions about this part? - Lisa asked Linc, not taking her eyes off his tense face.

- There is one actually, - Lincoln replied after a brief pause, gathering his thoughts and singling out the one question that bothered him the most, - What do humor and memes have to do with manipulation?

- Good question! We could rant on this topic for hours, but today we're going to limit ourselves to the general principle of how memes work on any social network. You see, big brother, you probably don't know that part of the history of the Internet long before social networks, but I'll explain it to you right now. Once upon a time there were blogs instead, where people could write down their rather long posts, about as long as a user agreement.

- That no one reads?

- Yes, but it's honestly not worth reading. Still, a long post, especially if it's good with its ideas and content, is worth it. However, - Lisa continued, - after many years, blogs lost their relevance and were replaced by social medias, well, you already know that even without me.

At first, they worked just like blogs did, and everything was fine. Until a certain point. After that, it became a trend to reduce the number of words in the posts and so the words were being reduced until they were replaced with pictures. Too many letters! We need pictures! That's how social network users thought, and that's how the first memes appeared.

And here appeared the companies which developed these social medias, and simply changed the algorithms, which turned all this situation for better. Better for themselves, of course. From now on, even if the user tries to write a long post, it will inevitably be greatly limited with the number of symbols by the platform itself and that's why it will not be so large in its volume. But the main part here is that people will simply not be able to read the post, even if it gets recommended to them in the feed. You know why?

- Why?

- The thing is that over time people get used to not only the presentation of information (in this case, from long text to pictures), but they also get used to the rhythm of its presentation and the rhythm of reading.

It is not a difficult task to flip through a hundred or even several hundreds of such pictures in a couple of hours, everyone knows that well. As well as the fact that there is an absolute risk of getting addicted to the social medias. Tell me, my dear older brother Lincoln, - here Lisa made a dramatic pause, - did you use SwiftyPic today? For how long?

- I think, for about an hour.

- And how many «posts» did you flip through in that hour?

- I don't really know, - Lincoln replied thoughtfully, - I don't count them. I think there were quite a few of them.

- Let's say so. Do you remember what all those posts were about?

- Of course not! I probably won't even remember a half of it.

- Anyway, do you at least remember what any of the 5 posts you flipped through were about? Their content, plot and the message they delivered? Can you retell me them?

Lincoln tried to strain his brain to the best of his ability to recall any memories of the posts he had seen that day, of which Lisa only requested for five. It was all in vain, he couldn't remember, and he replied rather uncertainly:

- Uh, no.

- Will you name three posts?

- I won't.

- Exactly! Because you're used to absorbing any sort of information, even the most useless one, without analyzing it. How so? You're subscribed to so many different groups on self-development, on drawing! By the way, you spent an hour browsing one of the biggest platforms and was, like, «learning something useful», right? But you still do not remember what you spent a whole hour of your time on. And this is the goal of the most part of social medias and almost 99% of the largest ones out of them - mass dumbing down of people by limiting their thinking, after which they will no longer be able to connect events logically and make any kind of complex conclusions. Forget about critical thinking, objectivity and analytics in children raised on social medias!

Have you ever wondered why all of you, even Lori! Are asking me to do your homework for you?

- You're the only Wunderkind in the whole house! - Lincoln responded to her honestly.

- Thank you, - Lisa thanked him for the compliment, yet not showing outwardly how flattered she was by it, - but I must say that it's not only that, but also the fact that you simply forgot how to study on your own! And it's because of the reasons I've already told you about. Let's move on to the next point.

By this moment, Lincoln was already pretty interested in Lisa's story: it was much easier for him to understand it than it had been at the very beginning, so he wasn't as bored. However, he was still waiting for the moment when they would start exploring the "junk" Lisa was talking about, which he thought was comic books.

- Humor, - Lisa continued, - In order for you to understand the huge role the laughter plays in shaping a person's beliefs, take a look at this, - Lisa pulled a small pile of papers from the drawer of her desk and flipped through them, selecting a few papers and showing them to Lincoln. He ran his eyes over the text. Some kind of statistics, he thought. As he did so, he saw that the small areas followed by more detailed statistical information were covered with paper tape that was easy to remove. Lisa wanted to surprise Lincoln by first showing him the answers of the respondents and then showing him the percentage of people who voted in favor of a particular answer. The results, by the way, were quite frightening.

- This is a survey I decided to do with Luan. Both Luna and Luan had a microphone, and both of our sisters had charisma and wouldn't be afraid to ask different people a couple hundred questions, but it would take a lot of charm to interview people on the streets without scaring them off, so I favored our comedian.

- And what came out of it? What was your survey with her about?

- First of all, we decided to conduct it among respondents from 6 to 20 years old, since adults who grew up without social medias are usually not susceptible to the manipulations used by many platforms. We asked their opinion on memes about some tragedy, such as the September 11 terrorist attack.

These words got to Lincoln. 9/11 memes! It was horrible, but from time to time he saw something like that in his feed. But he didn't understand - who in their right mind would laugh at such a thing?

- A total of 3,500 people was surveyed, - Lisa said, which made Lincoln whistle involuntarily. Quite a lot, and when she added that it was practically all the residents of Royal Woods under the age of eighteen and made up about 15.7 percent of the city's population, he grew wary. He was curious to see what the results came out of her and Luan's survey.

Lisa showed him the top three responses that garnered over 95 percent of all votes: «I joke about it/make fun of such jokes but don't think twice about it», «I joke/make fun of such jokes and don't see anything wrong with them», «I don't joke or laugh at such jokes and think they are immoral».

- There were also responses like «I find it difficult/unwilling to answer» and even «I haven't encountered such a thing», - Lisa explained, - but since they got such a ridiculous number of votes, we're not interested in them. Do you want to know which response got the most votes?

- Show me already!

She peeled the paper tape off the area overlapped by it above the «I joke about it/make fun of such jokes but don't think twice about it» response and the number 52 appeared in large print in front of Lincoln.

- Say what now? - Lincoln first shook his head in surprise, then wiped his eyes and stared at the number.

- Yes, that's perfectly right, Lincoln. Fifty-two percent of the respondents we surveyed explicitly stated that they laugh at 9/11 jokes and sometimes even make them up and put them on the Internet as posts or memes, but they don't even think about it!

In most cases we got the responses like, «Yeah, that's funny. No, I didn't think about it seriously», or «Of course it's awful! But I'm not serious about them and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. It's just a humor». Did you get it? More than half of the younger population of Royal Woods doesn't even think about the fact that many people died during that terrorist attack, many families lost their relatives and that no one was laughing during the attack? We even came across such a response that I cannot call it anything else but the stupidest of all, «I like to laugh at the black humor sometimes. But making jokes about 9/11? That's just immoral!" Moving on...

Lincoln was puzzled, but he felt ashamed of himself, particularly because of the last answer he had heard just now. No, he had never laughed at 9/11 or made jokes about it. But when there were other tragedies, often localized, that is, those that ended sadly mostly for one or two people, it was all different for him, and he laughed. At times he even made jokes about such things himself, but never told them to anyone in class until they became quite popular at his school.

The shame passed moments later, however, as he was still thinking about his comic book. It was more important to him than Lisa's report. Lisa, meanwhile, read out the next response:

- «I joke/make fun of jokes like that and don't see anything wrong with them». We got, - she peeled the paper tape off the second overlapped area, - 27% of the vote with this particular response. Just think about it! 945 kids, teens and young adults not only joke about it, they don't see it as something immoral! We also heard a variety of responses from them, I will not cite all of them, but I will state their general message: «It's very funny, yet too righteous moralists are again trying to ban everything and teach everyone what can be funny and what can't! When will they understand that humor is a subjective thing and that there is no such thing in nature that at least one person will not laugh at?»

What beautiful words they are. Just so you understand, Lincoln, - Lisa continued, finishing her quotation, - these children will grow up one day and go to college, work somewhere, or otherwise interact fully with others in society. Can you imagine what will happen if they remain with these beliefs in their heads as adults?

Lincoln was still amazed. But, he thought, there was nothing particularly surprising here, because everything had happened exactly as he had expected - childish foolishness, excessive panic, and obvious exaggeration. At least he'd get a comic book.

- Finally, respondents who chose the «I don't joke or laugh at such jokes and think they are immoral» response. How many do you think there are of them?

- Very little, - Lincoln guessed.

- Exactly! - Lisa replied, revealing the last big number, 21 percent, - To be more precise, it's quite a large number, but still pales in comparison to the previous numbers I just told you about. Twenty-one percent disapprove of this kind of humor. They're also disparagingly being called «moralists» and mocked on the Internet. Do you know why so?

- N-no.

- This is where we come to the heart of today's lecture! - Lisa said, smiling almost ear to ear, so engrossed in her story that she felt proud of herself for being as good as any adult, which of course is true to all children, no matter how much she hid it.

- The problem is, - she continued after a short pause, - that humor is the strongest leverage on minds and it works in the simplest way possible, let me explain how: a certain group of people, be it directors of competing companies, politicians or social media executives, need to discredit their opponents and make themselves look good without saying a single word about themselves. To do this, they simply ridicule those whose opinions and influence on society go completely against their line.

There are so many various ways to do this: bribe the media, bloggers and trolls to do it all the time. The result is obvious, it is no longer cool, or, as you would put it, «it ain't cool no more» to be in favor of morality at any extent, because for them you will always be just an obsessed moralist, who simply cannot live in his pleasure and doesn't allow others to do so either! And that's just one of the most obvious examples I can possibly think of.

Luan shared with me her most valuable experience, which I think is worth mentioning. In order to become the accepted norm in society for some immoral or simply harmful action, all you need to do is to make jokes about it from time to time, regularly ridicule the opponents of this or that action, some time will pass and then - bingo! It will no longer be so immoral or harmful and will be practiced everywhere.

At first, of course, this will be opposed in every possible way, people will start saying, "How is this possible? Is it a good thing to do? You apply the same method, and no one will interfere with you anymore! This phenomenon, which I have just described to you, is called in science...

- Indeed, all this is really bad, - Lincoln interrupted her, tired of listening to her train of thought, which he thought he could easily counterattack by destroying it to the core, - but maybe we shouldn't dwell on it so much. In general, it's not so sad as you're telling me, if you don't deliberately look for evil in everything.

- I'm not looking for evil in everything, - Lisa objected, - I'm just showing you the problem, the way different people approach it, and telling you how not to become the same! Your point of view has a right to exist. However, a complete ignorance in such matters can lead to a real disaster, even if it is just for you. I'm only explaining to you how it works, but what to do with this information afterwards - you think and decide for yourself. Either way: Forewarned is forearmed!

Suddenly Lisa, having finally finished her thought, noticed that Lincoln was extremely uninterested in what she had been trying to convey to him for the last hour. She had already known in advance what his purpose in joining her club was, and so she said:

- By the way, I suggest you familiarize yourself with this phenomenon in practice. Read this comic at your leisure time!

She handed him a rather old and faded comic book, which made it look even older, since it was already grayish-white. Lincoln took it from her, examined it, bringing it slightly closer, and got a little curious, but then he lowered the comic book and began to stare intently at Lisa.

- I think we shall conclude our first lecture for today... - she saw his gaze, which after her words became truly a boring gaze and his face grew displeased. He was expecting something from her, even demanding, judging from his eyes, but she already knew what he expected from her.

- Also, I forgot to tell you one thing, Lincoln. Congratulations! We had our very first meeting and I am glad that you were the very first participant and moreover, you listened attentively to my lecture till the end. Good job! I think you deserve this.

She handed him the most «original» fiftieth anniversary comic book about Ace Savvy, which she had printed herself with the help of her sisters! Lincoln trembled with joy. Yes! He, Lincoln Loud, would own it, read it, and then tell Clyde and his other friends about it!

He immediately tucked it in his pocket and thanked Lisa, saying he would definitely come and visit her again. She told him that he could come here in a week, at the same time as today.

Lincoln left the room with no small amount of delight, went into his own room and locked himself in to take a closer look at the rarest comic book, while Lisa put all her papers away in a drawer and returned the microscope, flasks and chemicals to their place.

At that very moment, Lily crawled into the room and approached Lisa to share her observations with her in a baby language. Lisa, however, turned to her and said:

- Let me better tell you what I realized today, the youngest sibling. Sometimes, in order to get people interested in you and your work, you need to get interested in other people and their works too. If you sincerely like some work of a person, praise him or her, take from this work some useful thoughts for yourself. Be kind and responsive to everyone, and then everyone will reach out to you.

Lily didn't understand her words, shrugged again, as she had earlier in the day, and crawled away. Lisa continued her thought, this time in monologue format:

- Lies can be said for good. It is even better that you crawled away, Lily, because it is not a good idea to tell children such things. They won't get it right and will always tell lies purposely, even if it is for evil, because they have a different view on what does "telling lies for good" mean.

For her five years of age, the young Wunderkind Lisa Loud had an excellent understanding of psychology and people that she had never imagined before. She remembered how just the year before, completely failing the «social skills» subject, she got an F in her report card, which hurt her a lot, because, since she was an excellent student with the corresponding syndrome, she would not allow herself a single thought of a bad mark.
That's why, having made a lot of progress in this direction over the past year, she not only raised her grade to a solid A+, but also gained a lot of other advantages - for example, now she could safely communicate with her peers, tell them about her interests and observations, which they, expectedly, never understand and even have no idea about them. Also, she found some strength and confidence in her to start a philosophy club and bring Lincoln here.

However, there was still at least one subject of life that she would not be able to prepare for so easily by just having read everything she could get her hands on and pass it with an A. She had some difficulties, mostly caused by her age. Because this subject is called «life experience», which is passed and which justifies itself only after many, many years of life.

Thanks for reading this chapter till the end! Any feedback and criticism would be appreciated.

Expect a new chapter soon.