Meme

This article is about cultural information. For memes related to the internet, see Internet meme.

A meme (/miːm/ MEEM) is an idea or belief which spreads because one person copies it from another.

One idea is that culture builds in a way similar to living things. An example would be how viruses spread to different organisms. Memes change as they go, creating controversy, and sculpting society. Just as a virus would, memes evolve from their state, being photoshopped, and exaggerated. Memes can be about anything. Most memes are so called dank memes.

Example of a typical meme (with the impact font)

Biologist and evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins invented the word meme in 1976.^[1] He said that tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothing fashions, ways of making pots, and the technology of building arches were all examples of memes.

Examples of memes

• Technology: cars, paper-clips, etc. The progress of technology is a bit like genetics, because it has spread by 'mutations' or changes to progress. For example, many paper-clip designs have been made. Some last longer than others, and some look better than others. In the end the ones that are copied are a memetic success.
• Jokes spread and change the more they are told.
• Proverbs
• Gossip
• Nursery rhymes: passed on from parent to child over many generations (thus keeping old words such as "tuffet" and "chamber" popular when they are not used today).
• Epic poems: once important memes for preserving oral history; writing has largely superseded their oral transmission.
• Conspiracy theories
• Recipes
• Fashions
• Religions: complex memes, including folk religious beliefs, such as The Prayer of Jabez.
• Popular concepts: these include Freedom, Justice, Ownership, Open Source, Egoism, or Altruism
• Group-based biases: everything from anti-semitism and racism to cargo cults.
• Longstanding political memes such As "mob rule", national identity, Yes Minister and "republic, not a democracy".
• Programming paradigms: from structured programming and object-oriented programming to extreme programming.
• Internet phenomena: Internet slang. "Internet memes" propagate quickly among users using email, websites, blogs, discussion boards and other Internet communications as a medium.
• Moore's Law: this meme is particularly interesting. The original law was "semiconductor complexity doubles every 18 months". It described growth in terms of the number of transistors on a chip.
• Metameme: The concept of memes itself is a meme.
• Anecdotes: Short jokes or other stories.
• Phrases; and common expressions.
• Viral marketing: A type of marketing based on memes and using "word of mouth" to advertise (see the recent example of Snakes on a Plane).
• Chain-letters

Related pages

• Figure of speech
• Internet meme
• Propaganda
• Rhetoric
• Self-replication
• Semiotics