Meanings in free fall: between metamodernist prose and viral memes

Abstract

Dear readers!

The editorial board of the scientific and practical online journal "Experience Industries. Socio-Cultural Research Technologies" (EISCRT) presents its first issue for 2026 to its readers.

This issue presents a panorama of sociocultural reflection on the paradoxes of contemporary society, plunging into the abyss of digital communications. They specifically reinterpret classical anthropological and artistic traditions, shaping and promoting new contexts of cultural memory.

The issue opens with an article by an international team of authors, including renowned Russian scholar Valery Savchuk and his Chinese student, Chaoran Jiang. The researchers analyze the current state of aesthetics, the study of contemporary art. As it turns out, art enthusiastically criticizes artistic theory, while theory itself always examines art as a whole and never approaches it as a spectrum of specific artistic achievements. This is precisely why aesthetic analysis of works of art is excessively abstract and speculative, which ultimately leads to the destruction of aesthetics as a discipline.

Novgorod scholar Nikolai Kashchei continues his analysis of the causes and characteristics of the transformation of artistic meanings. He examines anthropological scenarios for the implementation of rhetorical practices, which are increasingly being reduced to local political and ideological contexts. The historical struggle between sophistry and Platonism, characteristic of the European intellectual tradition, is becoming increasingly relevant in the modern world, which, in essence, is the reason for the emergence of the rhetoric of "imperfect man," increasingly immersed
in the simulacra of Plato's cave of big data.

Thus, a specific, metamodernist worldview is gradually taking shape, the specific manifestations of which become the subject of Olga Elkan's research. In the "Names" column, this St. Petersburg-based author offers an analysis of the specific facets of metamodernism as represented in the works of renowned Russian writer Viktor Pelevin. His latest novel, "A Sinistra," is an original expansion of religious discourse, leading the sophisticated reader away from the world of Pelevin's Buddhism and Eastern wisdom to teachings closer in spirit to Christianity, which has traditionally been much more familiar to the Russian intellectual reader.

The historical and urban contexts of Orthodoxy are becoming a subject of scholarly interest for Novgorod-based authors Daniil Alexandrov and Tatyana Shmeleva. In the "Horizons" section, the researchers invite readers to consider contemporary practices for immersing tourists in the atmosphere of an ancient city. A unique blend of popular knowledge and quintessential experiences creates a unique immersive environment, the experience of which allows visitors to the historic city to develop authentic cultural experiences. This not only has the potential to expand the range of traditional tourist services but also to foster individualized visual, cognitive, and temporal trajectories of cultural dialogue.

The theme of visuality is further explored in the applied research of Muscovite Natalia Arkhipova. Using popular Russian online publications as examples, she identifies visual and semantic patterns inherent in their design models. The author establishes that certain stylistic accents directly depend on
the publication's social status positioning and the content of its media content, which ensures the necessary level of effective communication with target audiences in the media space.

As Murmansk authors Arsen Stoyan and Olga Machkarina rightly point out, media today are actively being transformed by technological tools.
And the emergence of digital media is giving rise to new forms of communication with their inherent cultural codes. One of the most prominent forms of modern internet communication are memes, products of
the construction of sought-after social meanings and significance. Consequently, mass consumers actively and mindlessly imitate popular thought patterns, which inevitably leads to the simplification of cultural codes, the infantilization of users, and the rise of an ideology of universal irresponsibility.

The issue concludes with an article by Moscow psychologist Olga Tarasova, who provides a detailed analysis of the widespread practice of infantile gambling among children and young people. Drawing on extensive empirical data, the author discovers a persistent correlation between gambling and the development of schizotypy and cognitive distortions in patients. These dependencies are the reason why schizoid gambling addicts retreat
into the enchanting world of virtual reality, where the social environment is increasingly displaced.

The publication's creative team hopes that the research materials presented in this issue will attract the attention of our readers and will become a reason for continuing scientific discussions, including on the pages of " Experience Industries".