Memetic Engineering in Qhevak

Memetic engineering is the art, science, and practice of directing the opinions, thoughts, ideologies, traditions, and behaviors of a population through a variety of methods. These methods may include influencing prominent leaders individually, hijacking or subverting existing communications networks, creating new propoganda and advertising, forming new educational institutions, changing laws, subtly re-organizing social networks, inducing immigration, and possibly other unconfirmed methods.

It's status as a host for numerous dangerous and unethical research programs has lead to Qhevak becoming a leading developer in advanced memetic engineering techniques. Given the extent of ubiquitous online connectivity on major habs, this is starting to become a major threat to public safety, to the point that software designed to locate dangerous memetic characteristics in incoming information has become a crucial safety feature in modern augmented reality suites.

The diversity of clades in Qhevak makes a single, all-consuming meme complex a relatively low level threat - the most dangerous memeplexes are typically only effective against a limited range and minds, and are unlikely to be effective against beings with dramatically different thought processes. Nevertheless, even small scale memetic outbreaks can have extremely dangerous effects, ranging from suicide cults to sabotage and terrorism.

One of the most dangerous engineering techniques is the multipart memetic assault, a (typically virulent) meme dispersed as multiple relatively harmless memes which only become virulent when they're brought into conjunction within a subject's mind. Neuro-fractal patterning techniques can infect subjects in an even more insidious fashion, using mathematically recursive patterns encoded in seemingly harmless visual and auditory information to create psychological and physiological changes in those viewing them.

The ultimate memetic warfare technique is so-called basilisk hacks, neuro-fractal patterns the targets visual system cannot easily deal with. This so-called 'Godelian shock input' can, to put it crudely, crash the target's mind. Modern basilisk hacks do not usually produce any immediate effect (due to delayed neurochemical encoding of 'Godelian spoilers'), but instead are triggered several hours to days later upon viewing any repetitive image that triggers the memory into recalling the original, dramatically raising casualty counts by delaying recognition of the basilisk's existence. Fortunately, basilisk hacks are inherently incapable of creating a memetic pandemic, and are generally some of the easiest memetic attacks for defensive software to recognize.

In general, memetic attack recovery is easier for Ems and other software entities than for nearbaselines and other biointelligences, as they can more easily self-monitor their internal state and reset to a backup before hostile information exposure if needed. On the other hand, creation of tailored memetic agents for Ems can be easier than for biointelligences, particularly if a fork of the target is available for study.