Meme-ish

Overview

The term meme-ish is used to refer to those attributes which help a meme to spread without adding any inherent value to it.

Meme-ish Traits

The following traits tend to cause ideas to propagate out of proportion to their value as ideas:

• comprehensibility: ideas which are easy to understand ("this medicine will make you healthy" as opposed to "this medicine might make you feel somewhat better if your illness meets certain conditions...")
• explainability: ideas which are easy to explain (some things are easier to understand than to explain, and vice-versa)
• promise / threat: ideas which promise reward and/or an avoidance of some undesirable consequence ("believe in the Word and be saved; those who believe not shall go to Hell" or "you need to wear make-up or men will think you are unattractive" or "you really need these ultrasonic deer sirens on your car if you want to avoid an accident")
• self-spreading: ideas which encourage the recipient to spread the idea ("send this email to 10 of your friends"; "spread the Gospel so that others may be saved")
• untestability of claims: if a claim isn't easy to prove or disprove, this makes it harder to argue against the meme (because it might be true); this is particularly effective when combined with promise / threat
• repetition: ideas which are deliberately seeded repeatedly tend to spread more rapidly; because of such spread, any given individual will tend to encounter such ideas from multiple sources, thus lending them additional credibility.

In general, these traits are most effective when combined in particular ways that effectively put up roadblocks against any of the obvious "exit reasoning" strategies, and thus make the meme very difficult for each new victim to resist.