I'm now remembering a minor part of the major plot point in Illuminatus! concerning the fnords. The idea was that normies are memetically influenced by "fnord" but the Discordians are too sophisticated for that. Discordian lore is that "fnord" is actually code for a real English word, but which one? Traditionally it's "Communism" or "socialism", but that's two options. So, rather than GMA, what if there's merely multiple different fnords set up by multiple different groups with overlapping-yet-distinct interests? Then the relevant phenomenon isn't the forgetting and emotional reactions associated with each fnord, but the fnordability of a typical human. By analogy with gullibility (believing what you hear because of how it's spoken) and suggestibility (doing what you're told because of how it's phrased), fnordability might be accepting what you read because of the presence of specific codewords.