Meme

Overview

The word meme was coined in 1976 by scientist-author Richard Dawkins to describe the idea that ideas have discernable attributes that affect the ways in which those ideas spread.

Although it may seem that "idea" and "meme" are indistinguishable, since all ideas are memes and all memes are ideas, it is generally presumed that an "idea" spreads only if it is a good idea, i.e. an idea which is generally seen to be beneficial in some way. A successful "meme", however, may spread because of attributes which have nothing to do with the idea's inherent value.

For example: the idea that "Bill Gates is giving away one million dollars to the thousandth person who forwards the message you are currently reading to 10 of their friends" has spread repeatedly across the Internet – not because the idea is in any way valuable (since it is utterly false), but because it successfully masquerades (in a small but sufficient percentage of cases) as a valid idea and contains suggestions which further encourage its propagation (again, in a small but sufficient percentage of cases).

These percentages, though small, are sufficiently offset by the rate of spread that the idea has taken quite some time to die down, and still crops up from time to time as new hosts are exposed who have not yet been "immunized" by Snopes.com or a more knowledgeable friend.

It is the property of spreading in spite of being of questionable value (if not actually harmful) that is most notably "meme-ish" about some ideas.

Reference

• Wikipedia

Related Articles

• Memes can spread through possession of inherent value or benefit, but they can also spread because of other more specifically meme-ish traits
• Meme warfare is a struggle for dominance between mutually exclusive memes.
• Power structure meme: a type of meme with a particular agenda

Quotes

Richard Dawkins said:

The central question for meme theory is whether there are units of cultural imitation which behave as true replicators, like genes. I am not saying that memes necessarily are close analogues of genes, only that the more like genes they are, the better will meme theory work...

– from The God Delusion, page 191