If you're familiar at all with Doctor Who, you did indeed hear that in your head in the voice of David Tennant's tenth incarnation of the Doctor.
The power of suggestion in these sorts of situations is strong. Words and images are agents of infection.
William S. Burroughs says it very succinctly here: Word is virus.
And the virus is the infection of thoughts and ideas.
It's not quite so sinister as
but, what if I were to post something like this:
I'm guessing you saw the title and had some sort of visceral reaction of "No way in hell am I clicking on that." Whether you watched the video or not, you've just been Rickroll'd. The power of suggestion.
I started exploring this idea earlier in a plurk: http://www.plurk.com/p/3cle13 and you can see from Betzi's reaction exactly how powerful that kind of suggestion is.
All it take is the small seed, the idea of an idea to make you think.
Now, you ask, how does this relate to parasites? That is, after all, why I'm blogging about this.
It has to do with two trees and two serpents.
The first pair shared a parasitic relationship. Nidhogg lays at the base of the world-tree Yggdrasil, gnawing at the roots, sucking the life out of the very world he inhabits.
The second serpent roosted not at the base of the tree, but dwelt amongst the branches. Revelations called him Satan and the Devil, but so far as I know, no name was officially given in the stories of Genesis. He -- and I use this pronoun loosely -- offered us the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He infected us with ideas.
And though these two serpents are reflections of each other from very different mythologies, it is their parallels that lead me to believe that within certain contexts, they can represent much the same thing. Namely, the serpent-parasite as knowledge. If they can be taken as the same serpent, one attains knowledge directly from the tree. He is parasite to the tree, but the tree reacts. He becomes infected with this pathogen of words. And as is his imperative then, he spreads it, furthering the contamination of the tree itself.
And perhaps the tree as a source of ideas by "God" is meant as a warning, which is why it would be made forbidden, which is why as the world tree it would encompass anything and everything.
We live such internal lives, creating false realities of the mind, much like this blog or plurk. Each timeline could then represent the internal reality of the plurker, specifically the internal reality as formed by their ideas.
This brings me, finally, to earworms.
Earworm: a song that gets stuck in your head. The earworm wriggles its way in and aggressively holds its place against any and all challenges. They feed on our thoughts, replacing them with lyrics and melodies. And sometimes the mere suggestion of a song is enough to implant the worm in your mind.
They are parasites upon the parasite of our thoughts.
Earworms are contagious. But as Betzi said in the above linked plurk, "It does beg the question, though: why share an earworm?"
Perhaps it is not the decision of the host, those afflicted by the song in question, but the earworm itself, wishing to replicate itself as ideas are wont to do. All I had to do was post a link to the Rick Astley song, make you see the title and it was enough to put the entire song in your head (assuming of course that you know the song or internet meme). Music is never a "mere suggestion" after all, if you know the tune it is almost instantly playing in your head.
Earworms are our modern snakes.
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