What Happens When Memes Are Commodities?

Putting a dollar value on the language of the internet will be weird

Zoe Roth, aka Disaster Girl

For over a decade, the image of a young girl smirking in the foreground as a home in the background is engulfed in flames has circulated as fodder for countless memes. The picture, known simply as Disaster Girl, though originally taken by an amateur photographer — who then entered…