About a Meme
For the uninitiated and confused (don’t worry, honey, I won’t mention you by name. Oh – could you pick up a gallon of milk on your way home from work?), a “meme” as referred to in my previous entry, 8 Things, is defined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) as: “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.”
Dawkins continues: “Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.”
As it applies to the World Wide Web, a “meme” is generally a format or questionnaire that is filled out and posted by someone on their blog or personal web page, and then other people see it and fill it out and post it themselves, and on and on it goes spreading virally to the far reaches of the internet. In a sense, it is the more well-to-do cousin of Spam, but containing a personal flair and very rarely imposing itself unsolicited on your Inbox under the guise of “Meet Cute Hot Grrlz.” (Unless it’s drunk.)
Now, a “MeMe” as referred to in my previous entry, Open Letter to MeMe Roth, is a deluded and ignorant simpleton with enough position and influence to do real damage to the world at large. (See also George W. Bush)
Sorry for the confusion.
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