The memes have me curious honestly.
In: 37
Well, it isn’t. Or, at least, it’s no more important than we choose to make it.
Groundwork: The Fibonacci numbers are the pattern 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13… where you get each new number by adding up the two previous numbers (0+1=1, 5+8=13, etc.). A Fibonacci *spiral* is what you get when you arrange Fibonacci-sized blocks together (a 1×1, a 1×1, a 2×2, a 3×3, a 5×5, an 8×8, etc) and then draw a curved line connecting their corners.
The golden ratio is a ratio that humans seem to find very pleasing, and which has seen enough attention and poetry about it that its appeal is kind of self-fulfilling at this point (even people who’ve never heard of the golden ratio have probably seen art that used it, or used something like it). The Golden spiral is a spiral based on the golden ratio, in a similar way to how the Fibonacci spiral is based on Fibonacci numbers (arranging blocks that get bigger and bigger based on the golden ratio).
With me so far? Here’s the neat part: the Fibonacci spiral is pretty close to the golden spiral, which makes it useful for diagrams and drawings. And the golden spiral is what’s called a *logarithmic spiral*, which is a shape that shows up all the time in nature and art and daily life.
Because it shows up a lot naturally, and because humans like to find patterns in the world around us (even when we’re over-fitting or finding patterns that don’t actually exist), it’s pretty easy to take a Fibonacci or golden spiral and put them over some other image to find a match (or close-enough match). Because the ratios and curves involved are pleasing to the human eye, that kind of match can *also* be pleasing and makes for nice, memetic images and theories.
Nowadays the memes are mostly ironic (“ooooh, *everything’s* a spiral!”), when it’s brought up at all, since that’s the lifecycle of a meme.
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