Eleanor McCarroll

This thesis examines “Agartha TikToks,” a rapidly emerging meme phenomenon that combines conspiracy theories, AI-generated imagery, internet irony, and far-right aesthetics across platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. Drawing on cognitive semantics and digital culture theory, the project argues that these meme trends operate as systems of communication with their own visual grammar, syntax, and rhetorical structures. Using a dataset of over 1,100 collected images alongside digital clustering and mapping techniques, the research explores how repeated motifs and visual “glitches” reveal the ideological meanings embedded within contemporary online culture. It investigates how fringe internet subcultures and conspiracy aesthetics have entered the mainstream through the accelerated language of memes.

Eleanor McCarroll is a writer and sound-artist based in Dublin. Her work is interested in meme-culture, conspiracies and conceptual noise production. During her time studying the BA Visual Culture, this interest has manifested in writing for magazines, exhibition curation and sound production for exhibitions. After completing the course she aims to continue making ambient sound pieces and digital media works based on her research.