[ricksunny]

Sure, disinformation narratives get seeded all the time to inoculate the population from any narrative that a vested interest determines is counter-agenda by rendering the narrative into an anti-meme.

• this person who suspects a research-related origin of covid is not a published, experienced virologist. Conclusion to draw: only virologists funded by research grants have credibility to sound-off publicly on covid origins. 'research-related covid origin' becomes an anti-meme.

• this person who asserted 'X' is an antisemite. (conclusion to draw: 'only people who accept 'not-X' are not antisemites' X becomes an anti-meme.

• this person who saw [unexplained craft in a sky / in a hangar] has Y derogatory items in their reputation. conclusion to draw: ;only people with derogatory reputations see UFOs' [unexplained craft] becomes an anti-meme.

[krackers]

Hm all good examples! In these cases the memetic component doesn't suppress knowledge of itself, but rather works to suppress knowledge of something else. Most propaganda or "submarine articles" could be seen in this lens. It seems to also seems to be a specific case of the "memetic/anti-memetic duality" that the other commenter mentioned, where in practice anti-memes have a memetic component that allows spread and an anti-memetic component that tries to suppresses information.

[ricksunny]

Well I think we’ve all seen the clickbait-y headlines declaring that X phenomenon has been ‘DEBUNKED’,and those headlines are definitely engineered to spread (and benefit from performance metrics feedback).

To go further, Eric Weinstein vecame knwon for coining the term ‘pre-bunked’ narratives. This was a version of memetic inoculating where the debunking had to get out ahead of the inconvenient narrative requiring debunking. A good and (by now) pretty uncontested example of this was Peter Daszak’s actions throughout the first half of 2020, with The Lancet Letter (aka Calisher et al, The Lancet, 2020) he organized (with Nobel signatories no less) providing a massive pre-bunk at a time when few in the public were seriously countenancing any pandemic origin, much less a research-related one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19)

  (I should offer disclaimer here that I remain an advisor to BiosafetyNow, an advocacy organization).