Living Rent-Free in Symbolic Space - Archetypal Provocation, Narrative Resistance, and Coherence in Digital Publics
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: This paper explores the internet idiom “living rent-free in someone’s head” as more than a colloquial joke. It treats the phrase as a marker of symbolic occupation and archetypal fixation within digital publics. Drawing on Jung’s theory of archetypes (1964), Lakoff and Johnson’s work on metaphor (1980), Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning (1991), and Turkle’s analysis of online identity performance (2011), the study situates online hostility and repeated return engagement as evidence of deeper psychological and symbolic processes. The research is anchored in digital ethnography and symbolic psychology, using Reddit and meme culture as experimental containers. Intentionally absurd semiotic cues—such as the word “Skibidi”—are deployed as provocations that reveal interpretive stance. For some users, these cues provoke immediate dismissal (“nonsense,” “word salad”), indicating symbolic illiteracy or defensive closure. For others, they generate compulsive fixation: repeated re-engagement, ban cycles, and hostile commentary. Such reactions are interpreted as indicators of archetypal resonance and unresolved symbolic tension. Findings are framed in conversation with biblical archetypes of rejection and return (John 1:11; Philippians 2:7–11), narrative identity theory (McAdams, 1993), and narrative therapy (White & Epston, 1990). The study argues that figures expelled from communities—whether prophets in scripture or trolls in digital space—often persist as symbolic anchors, shaping collective identity precisely through rejection. By treating “living rent-free” as a diagnostic phenomenon, this paper contributes to digital anthropology, narrative psychology, and theology. It proposes that fixation, resistance, and hostile repetition are not noise in online discourse but evidence of strained coherence and ongoing symbolic transformation. What digital publics dismiss most violently may be what they are still unconsciously metabolizing.
Author: MacLean, Ryan
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7080299668
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