Fungi Frameworks: Rethinking behaviour change in a meme world
Although Brat summer is over, it showed us the way memes and vibes are often an underestimated part of behaviour change
In partnership with Ayla Shiblaq for political science analysis & commentary
Brat, the album released earlier this year by musician Charli XCX, was widely considered to capture the essence of the moment of women rejecting expectations, being honest and having fun. We were in Brat Summer, with Charli XCX announcing in July that “Kamala IS brat”, anointing the then US Presidential contender with her 'meme-crown.' This was seen as helpful to her campaign with, for example, Gevin Reynolds - a former speechwriter for Harris, saying he believes it's "extremely smart for [Kamala] to lean into the meme…It shows a recognition of how critical young voters are to winning in November and a commitment to meeting them where they are."
However, despite Brat being labelled name of the year by one dictionary publisher, we are at a point where Kamala Harris has resoundingly lost the US election and music critics suggesting they have had enough of Brat and they now cannot wait for the vibe shift. We are living, it seems, in a harsh world where what can seem exciting, fun and innovative at the beginning of the summer is very much old news as autumn comes around.
The implications of this surely need to be worked through for the more earnest world of marketers, policymakers and behavioural scientists, whose plans and models may simply not keep up with the dizzying impact of memes (cultural symbols or ideas for the uninitiated) on peoples' behaviour. But just as memes may be fleeting, that does not mean some people, such as Donald Trump, might simply be better at using them for their own ends. Look at the stream of memes the Trump camp created from "They're eating the dogs", a baseless conspiracy theory that Haitian migrants in Ohio were abducting and eating pets, to '"Sleepy Joe," portraying Biden as incompetent, tired, or senile. Tasteless and offensive for sure, but given the convincing win in the US presidential elections, this was possibly effective in helping to shape attitudes and voting behaviour.
If we are in an environment where memes and vibes shape behaviour, how much can we rely on traditional policy making, improving peoples lives to result in election wins? Deepak Bhargava, Shahrzad Shams, and Harry Hanbury, in a piece called “The Death of ‘Deliverism,’” recently argued that the US Democratic party’s unpopularity suggested that a focus on policy to improve people’s lives is largely irrelevant to electoral outcomes. Instead, what matters are “emotion- and identity-driven political appeals that [are] deeply attuned to the frustrations and anxieties people expressed every day.”
If this is the case, then are traditional behaviour change models keeping up? Most models will have dimensions that can be pressed into service, such as emotion, identity and social norms, but how well these represent the dynamics of memes and vibes is debatable. Perhaps the more traditional behaviour-change models (e.g., COM-B) do not always do as good a job as needed to reflect the process by which behavioural dimensions are shaped and connected to behaviour outcomes.
There is, at the very least, a case to be made that we live in an era in which the models used to understand and influence behaviour are not optimised for a changing world. To explore this bold challenge, we will first examine the changing landscape.
From recognition to reputation
The US election perhaps crystallised that we live in a landscape where memes and vibes increasingly shape behaviours. This aligns with the way political sociologist Will Davies argues for a shift away from the dominant concept of 'recognition,' the way our identities are shaped by how others understand who we truly are and how our cultural and historical contexts have influenced us. Instead, he makes a case for the way ‘reputation' has become much more important: this is defined as a form of value that we accumulate through public perception, often shaped by reactions, ratings, and feedback in digital and social environments.
For example, suppose a restaurant owner has a menu that reflects their cultural heritage, which earns appreciation for the authenticity and care behind their food. In that case, this is recognition, establishing their identity and the intrinsic value of their work. In contrast, their reputation is determined by online metrics such as reviews, star ratings, and social media likes, which can fluctuate based on trends or even a single viral post. While recognition values deeper understanding, reputation depends on these sorts of external, transactional judgments and measurable popularity.
Picking up the example of 'brat summer’, while the internet quickly embraced brat, how it was more or less pronounced as 'dead' just six months later shows the reputation economy's volatility. Hence, whilst the 'brat' aesthetic initially held an allure of authenticity, its death offers a warning: in a reputation economy, authenticity is merely another fleeting aesthetic that can be consumed and discarded.
Davies suggests that social media has an important role in these meme cycles, turning recognition into a volatile, zero-sum game. The algorithmic logic that drives these platforms rewards novelty and virality, so once a meme loses traction, it rapidly dies and makes room for the next vibe. In this system, social identity becomes an endlessly replaceable set of aesthetics, reinforcing Davies' argument that recognition has been eroded into a shallow, reputation-driven economy.
Vibe-ification and the US election
While political campaigns once carefully controlled the image of a candidate, social media has now, arguably, democratised how these political identities are grown and shaped. This means that in the reputation economy, a politician's success hinges on their ability to create, harness or align with trends. However, as seen in the case of 'Kamala IS brat,' these associations can be fragile. When the internet embraces a politician as a meme, it also holds the power to withdraw support. This volatility reflects Davies' critique: in a world where political identity is constructed by internet consensus, reputation is fleeting, and recognition—the stable validation of a politician's worth and dignity—is lost.
Political scientist Rodrigo Nunes' work outlines how this dynamic has reshaped political organising. As he explains, traditionally, grassroots campaigning relied on door-knocking, personal outreach to contacts, and community organising. However, the rise of digital platforms means these methods are secondary to the viral spread of ideas, personas, and memes.
Trump's campaigns exemplify this shift, particularly their low reliance on traditional grassroots operations. In 2016, Trump leveraged support from internet followers who amplified his 'vibe' and campaign messaging online. By 2024, Trump's strategy had evolved, engaging influential right-leaning male podcasters to extend his reach and connection with key audiences. Appearances on widely-followed platforms hosted by figures such as Joe Rogan, Tim Pool, and Dave Rubin allowed Trump to bypass traditional media and speak directly to millions. On Rogan's podcast, Trump explored themes of free speech, media bias, and government overreach, resonating with Rogan's audience of sceptics and free thinkers. With his focus on political polarisation and media integrity, Tim Pool's platform offered a space for Trump to criticise what he considered mainstream narratives and highlight the role of alternative media. Similarly, Dave Rubin's emphasis on free speech and cancel culture meant Trump could frame his campaign as a defence of constitutional freedoms.
It seems these podcasters acted as decentralised nodes in a network for building digital reputations, disseminating pro-Trump narratives to their vast, engaged audiences. In Nunes' ecological framework, successful social change does not rely on centralisation or hierarchy but instead on a distributed network of support. Trump's success surely demonstrates how digital reputation, amplified through influential online figures, facilitates a dispersed movement where individuals and creators act autonomously yet converge around a single candidate or idea.
A failure to directly address these dynamics in mainstream behavioural science models risks the discipline not keeping up with a rapidly changing world. This begs the question of how can the frameworks and models used to understand and intervene in behaviour better integrate this?
Fungi Thinking
It is helpful to start with a metaphor, as metaphors help us unpack complex issues as well as organise and design solutions. Of course, in cognitive psychology, computers have long served as the cornerstone metaphor (albeit contested) to explain human behaviour. We propose a different metaphor: fungi.
In nature, fungi are extraordinary organisms. Their underground mycelial networks spread laterally, forming vast, interconnected systems that share resources and adapt dynamically to their environment. Philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari famously used the rhizome—a similarly non-hierarchical, interconnected structure—as a metaphor for human behaviour. Fungi offer an even richer, more organic lens to understand behaviour's dynamic, multifaceted nature.
This suggests quite a radical alternative to traditional ideas of the way people interact and behave, viewing them not as fixed, atomised structures but as dynamic and networked beings that evolve in response to external influences. In Deleuze and Guattari's analysis, people are not static; just like fungi, they are 'assemblages'—a constantly shifting, decentralised collection of relationships, experiences, and influences. This notion is particularly relevant in the digital era, where social media and online platforms have given rise to fluid, interconnected identities shaped by trends, aesthetics, and collective engagement.
Assemblage (new behaviours)
This concept of assemblage offers a profound shift in the way we can then think about behaviour: rather than being constructed from a set of core essences (or psychological dimensions), we need to focus more on the way our lives result from our external connections that can be rearranged or altered. This is in stark contrast to what could be described as fixed, ‘tree-like’ models of behaviour, which implies a single origin (the individual as the unit of analysis) and a stable growth pattern (assuming we can create stable and sustained behaviour change in a predictable way from a set of interventions). In the context of ‘vibe politics’, the assemblage model suggest that behaviour is instead composed of temporary alliances with aesthetic trends, values, and personas that can rapidly be reassembled depending on current trends.
In addition, given that fungi have an underground network of roots where any part can connect to any other part, they form a behaviour that is always in the process of 'becoming'. This model suggests that attitudes and behaviours spread in all directions, connecting with aesthetics or trends like Brat in a way that feels much more organic, decentralised, and responsive to collective influences. This differs from traditional mindsets and behaviour notions, focusing on more routinised characteristics.
Vibe-ification as the new intervention?
This context suggests that politicians and influencers no longer rely solely on carefully crafted, hierarchical campaign strategies. Instead, they interact dynamically with internet culture, memes, and aesthetics, continuously reshaping their identities to stay relevant to their audiences. The ‘vibe’ becomes a means for politicians to become part of a digital assemblage, tapping into viral aesthetics to extend their reach horizontally across various online communities.
For instance, when a politician adopts the brat aesthetic, they align themselves with a more extensive network of cultural symbols and trends, gaining relevance within this 'assemblage'. These 'vibes' aren't necessarily a permanent part of their identity but instead a temporary, strategic 'reassembly' that allows them to resonate with audiences through aesthetics or emotions that are culturally salient at the moment.
In Deleuze and Guattari's terms, this isn't an act of ‘being’ a particular type of person or politician; instead it's a continual process of ‘becoming’ by aligning with dispersed, evolving cultural assemblages. They don't ‘have’ an identity in the traditional sense; they navigate through a web of identities based on what is socially valuable at any given time. As noted by Sam Wolfson, in politics this means that a candidate is no longer chosen necessarily based solely on their political record, their party, and platform but rather, on what they could be.
By adopting the concept of becoming, actors such as politicians or brands mirror the audiences they seek to engage: adaptable, flexible, and open to continuous reinvention. Whilst this allows public figures to tap into cultural currents and appeal to audiences on a dynamic level, it also leaves them vulnerable to the instability of digital culture. Just as quickly as a politician can "become" a part of a trend like Brat, they can be "deterritorialised"—disconnected from the assemblage as cultural tastes shift, leaving them irrelevant or even ridiculed.
Behaviour as a Networked Process
In Deleuze and Guattari's view, we all become part of a vast fungi network, where identities are assembled through temporary affiliations with trends, aesthetics, and groups rather than enduring characteristics. This model sees vibe-ification as a radical reimagining of people and behaviour—not as something one is or possesses but as something one navigates, constructing and deconstructing according to the ever-shifting cultural landscape.
It is clear that a fungi framework suggests that behaviour in the digital age is not about authenticity or core values; instead, it's about adaptability, responsiveness, and strategic alignment within a network of cultural assemblages. Fungi, assemblage-based identity means people remain fluid, reinventing themselves to stay relevant in a culture that prizes constant reinvention—but at the cost of stability, consistency, and, perhaps, depth.
It is not that people become passive recipients of memes without any individual agency; the imagery and metaphors deployed can instead enhance agency by making abstract goals actionable. In this way, we can see memes and vibes as cultural shortcuts, using aesthetics or narratives to provide clear, actionable signals for developing norms, identity, and behaviour. Similarly, although memes and vibes operate in the present, they can evoke future-oriented identities or aspirations (e.g., ‘brat’ as a signal of rebellion or authenticity), allowing people to connect present actions to future ambitions.
Implications for behavioural models
We can perhaps see the shifts set out above in different models – arguably, a behavioural economics approach of gamification and nudges reflects a world where we are shaped by external contexts and incentives at the cost of stable properties that we each hold. Chater and Lowenstein have explored this shift from focusing on the individual to systems. Models tracking a more social orientation to behaviour have developed, such as Ruth Schmidt's SPACE model and there has been a greater focus on systems mapping to understand wider influences on behaviour. Both the Social amplification of risk model or the Trans Theoretical Model offer routes through to understanding the temporal nature of behaviour change.
However, understanding how vibes and memes operate is not front and centre to any of these models – we need something that lets us know how they work and covers their different characteristics properly. This means a greater focus on the process by which behaviours are formed, spread, abandoned, reimagined and so on, rather than the model of current behaviour, intervention, desired outcome model that is so prevalent today. We are interested in developing approaches that will better integrate critical features such as those set out below:
Formation and Reinforcement: How media accelerates the visibility of behaviours through memes and vibes, creating the perception of widespread acceptance. And how repeated exposure drives individuals to adopt the implied mindsets and behaviours as norms, reinforcing their status within communities.
Fluidity: The way memes and vibes are dynamic, adapting as influential figures validate new forms. This allows individuals and campaigns to align their identities with emerging trends, leveraging cultural relevance or risking detachment if they fail to adapt.
Bandwagon Effect: Digital platforms amplify memes and vibes through visible approval metrics (e.g., likes and shares). And showing how, while this fosters rapid adoption, such popularity is precarious, as trends can lose relevance quickly.
Resistance and Rejection: Overexposure or perceived imposition of memes and vibes can provoke a backlash. This rejection underscores the risks of insincerity or poor timing when aligning with memes and vibes.
Temporal Sensitivity: Memes and vibes have a limited lifespan, offering short-term benefits but requiring acute awareness of their temporal sensitivity. Successful activities balance immediate cultural relevance with the flexibility to pivot as norms evolve.
Influence Cascades: memes and vibes gain momentum through cascading influence as individuals replicate them. However, sustaining this momentum is challenging, as attention shifts can cause cascades to dissipate as quickly as they arise.
The behavioural research backdrop
We can see how the timing is right for a re-appraisal of behaviour change models – arguably, this is long overdue given the trajectory of the work we have been covering in Frontline Be Sci.
Betsy Paluk's work on social norms highlights that behaviour change depends not only on imitation but also on actively interpreting the actions and identities of influential individuals within social networks. This parallels how memes and vibes, such as those surrounding Charli XCX's ‘Brat,’ can quickly shape and shift social norms in the digital age. Furthermore, Paluk's concept of targeting social referents to drive widespread change mirrors how key actors, such as politicians, leverage memes to influence public perception. Paluk's research underlines the argument that traditional behaviour change frameworks may fall short in capturing modern social dynamics' fluid and ephemeral nature.
Sloman and Fernbach's insights into the limitations of individual knowledge and the reliance on collective information align closely with the essay's focus. They argue that much of what we ‘know’ is distributed across social networks, which parallels how memes and vibes shape collective understanding through shared cultural symbols. Sloman and Fernbach emphasise our dependence on the collective knowledge of communities, whereas traditional behaviour change models often prioritise individual cognition. Consequently, these models fail to account for modern social influences' pervasive and collaborative nature.
Daphna Oyserman's research on identity-based motivation emphasises that individuals are driven to act in ways that affirm their social identities, continually shaped and reshaped by their interactions and cultural contexts. This aligns with how memes and vibes serve as dynamic identity markers, prompting individuals to adopt and adapt behaviours to fit evolving social trends. In addition, Oyserman highlights the fluidity of identity and the role of cultural symbols in guiding behaviour, complementing the fungi model's core proposition of behaviour as a dynamic, networked process.
In conclusion
It is well understood that no model is ever entirely correct; they are all only correct to varying degrees. Behavioural frameworks are set-up to be inherently fallible, serving as approximations of complex realities. The challenges traditional behaviour change models face do not diminish their value but highlight the need for their evolution. As our environment becomes increasingly influenced by fleeting memes and dynamic social norms, these models must be reviewed and developed to reflect this changing emphasis in order to remain effective.
While existing behaviour change frameworks may encompass some of the mechanisms discussed, they do not adequately capture the 'fungi' characteristics of behaviour—such as fluidity, collective nature, recursive interactions, and temporal sensitivities. This gap calls for behaviour change practitioners to adopt 'fungi thinking' as an additional lens. Instead of discarding current models, we can better integrate this perspective to enable a more nuanced understanding of behaviour in a rapidly evolving cultural landscape. Ultimately, rethinking, redesigning, and re-energising behaviour change models is essential to effectively address the complexities of modern social dynamics and the way these influence behaviour.
In the 1970’s and 80s, cultural theorist Stuart Hall suggested that popular plans to fix the UK’s National Health Service failed to cut through to voters against the emotion- and identity-driven political appeals of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party. These appeals closely reflected the frustrations and anxieties people expressed every day. Hall argued the case for listening to what people are actually talking about and how they expressing it, rather than assume their priorities. So while memes and vibes are not new, there is an ever more pressing case for their more informal inclusion in the work of behavioural scientists as the environment is arguably ever more attuned and constructed around them.