In 2020, the lives of every human on the planet changed forever. As Covid continued to grow and cover the entire world, the distinctions between the ‘before Covid’ and ‘post-Covid’ realities started to separate further and further until day to day life looked almost nothing like life the ‘Before Times,’ as we now call them. As we draw closer to reaching a certain level of normalcy once again, everyone wants to look into the future. However, I believe that for the well-being of our society and the uncertain future of our world, we need to look backwards (and forwards) at the same time. A temporal pincer maneuver, if you will.

For those who haven’t seen the 2020 film Tenet directed by Christopher Nolan, this next part is not going to make much sense. The good news is that you only will need to watch the 150 minute film twice to fully understand (maybe) what we are talking about. Let’s start with some background.

Released last year at the height of the Covid pandemic, Nolan’s newest film explores the possibility of a future at war with the present, using a yet-to-be-discovered technology that allows future villains to reverse the entropy of items and send them backwards in time. It’s up to the heroes in the present to stop the future from destroying the present in an attempt to reverse the death of the universe, or something like that. Regardless, the main concept we want you to take away from this is the ability to send things backwards in time.

For example, imagine if you could send something back just two years into the past – you could tell yourself a lot, right? Even something as simple as a meme about post-Covid life would be indiscernible to you in the past, and yet, it might have given you enough warning to be more prepared this time around.

Our idea is to use the technology from Tenet to do exactly this – send memes into the past. We believe that if we can send enough memes back as far as we can, past meme scholars will be able to figure out what the future holds and change enough of their own present to save us from ourselves.

You might be wondering, ‘Why memes? Why not just send detailed instructions into the past?’

A fair question. To borrow a quote from the movie, ‘Don’t overthink it.’ Or another quote, ‘What’s happened has happened,’ meaning that there’s only so much we can change.

By sending memes, rather than secure documents, we might be able to alter the world in subtle enough ways that we can maintain our current timeline without creating a new one, making the entire experiment irrelevant. If they never have the need to create Tenet, then our future is destroyed as well as our past. However, if we can push just enough to alter our present without changing too much of the past, we can create a better future for all.

Plus, it would be pretty funny to send JFK a meme about his own assassination. But that’s just a little bonus.