Reddit memes

In my previous post, I discussed how memes played a pivotal role in developing the Ichingportal. The power of the I Ching lies in its ability to allow the human psyche to internalize abstract meanings into one’s own personal experience. Memes do something similar: they convey a slice of real-time emotion and experience into a format that can be universally expressed.

When I originally built this site, I tapped the Imgur API, which worked to a degree but has gone downhill over the past few years. Enter the Reddit API with its deep well of meme subreddits. If you’re into memes, Reddit has always been a go-to site. Their meme subreddits come in all shapes and flavors.

It’s a perfect canvas to execute data queries using hexagram-specific keywords. The Reddit results can be all over the map, but then again, that’s the beauty of the randomness. What might mean nothing to one person might hit the mark for another. Memes can take many shapes and forms, and combining them with I Ching meanings creates a new dynamic. That’s my goal here with the Ichingportal. Divination in real-time using real-time data; and memes and Gifs are the perfect start. So, do a coin toss or target a random hexagram. One of those memes tied to a hex keyword or phrase will leave its mark on your psyche.  

Currently there are 3 meme centric integrations set up on the Ichingportal.  In addition to Reddit Memes, there is a Giphy integration and a Klipy integration.  Interesting note, Klipy has become the defacto to Tenor, which discontinued it’s public api access.  Klipy has a data rich api offering 4 different formats and I can attest that during the past five months that I’ve been using it,  there’s been a noticeable jump in the quality of their content and  the way it adapts to the hexagram keyword queries. In a nutshell I’m liking the way the data jives between these too so check it out for yourself.  If anyone else out there has a meme/gif datasource of interest please let me know.  I’ve heard Mastodon has a motherlode of meme content so look for a future integration on that platform.