What is a Meme?
A meme is an idea, behavior, or concept from a culture that passes from one person to another, often on the Internet. A meme can be considered to be the smallest piece of information about a specific culture, and while information is useful, it only becomes a meme when it is passed along through some means of communication. On the Internet, ideas passed along from one person to another by social media often are referred to as memes.
Where did memes come from?
Memes come from a popularization of a Richard Dawkins book on genetics, called "The Selfish Gene." In his book, Dawkins describes how biology uses genes to transmit and replicate biological properties, such as hair color or eye color from one generation to another. Certain genes have the capability to spread and become more widespread, which in a sense, makes them selfish. A gene is commonly considered the smallest unit of biology which can be passed along from one generation to another. So how does this apply to culture?
A meme is the cultural equivalent to the biological gene, and is, therefore, the smallest self-replicating unit of culture. Like the biological gene, a meme has to have some characteristic that makes it unique in some way from other memes, and it has to have the ability to spread from one person in a culture to another. Deciding what makes up the smallest unit of culture is a matter of some debate, and that's often what makes the term meme confusing, since there is no real agreement by anyone what a unit of culture is in the first place.
The academic study of self-replicating ideas is called "memetics." From 1997 to 2005, there was an online academic journal devoted to memetics, and the word in common use has outlived the academic research that founded it.
It goes without saying that the term meme is often misused, but it's a way many people refer to an idea or concept that goes "viral," since going viral means that something is passed along from one person to another.
Types of memes
Memes provide an interesting point of entry to a discussion about media, journalism, and the lack of gate-keepers, like editorial boards. Memes don't have to be factually correct to get spread. The false meme is one type that is very common.
Some of the most widely spread memes use cherry picked data or outright falsehoods. An example of this is a quote, ostensibly by George Washington, that says "It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible." - according to the Mt. Vernon Historical Society, this has never appeared in Washington's letters, writings or speeches.
Another kind of meme is the time-warp. These memes, relating to the death of a celebrity, resurface years after the fact, presenting the obituary as breaking news. Sometimes, for celebrities with the right level of fame, they seem to come back every two to three years. (For example, Bob Denver, the actor who played "Gilligan" on Gilligan's Island, died in 2005 - his obituary gets turned into a meme every two to three years.)
Sometimes a meme shows up as a popular or well known phrase used on a photo, often in a social media post. While these current memes use photographs with text, they're older than the Internet. These types of memes are similar to chain letters, which date back to the 17th Century, which often asked people to send a duplicate letter requesting money to 5 friends as a get-rich-quick scam. With the advent of email, chain emails dating to the early 1990s talk about Bill Gates giving $5,000 to anyone who forwards the message on.
Popular Memes
Some memes are simply fun ideas that people seem to like and feel the need to forward on to their connections. As the meme becomes popular, other people pick up on the idea and create variations, adding to the spread of the meme. A graphic may find someone creating a song, video, or animation, which is what happened to the dancing hamsters in 1998. The homage to the dancing hamsters was an animation that in 1998 people felt the need to spread and is considered one of the top ten memes in Internet history. The website address is listed here but be warned, because you WILL see dancing hamsters!
http://www.hampsterdance.com/classics/originaldance.htm
You can find more popular memes if you're curious at these websites:
WTVR TV Top 10 Memes That Owned the Internet
Mashable - The Best 20 Memes of 2013
Cracked - The 9 Most Obnoxious Memes to Ever Escape the Web
To my way of thinking.
In general, memes are harmless - most of them are ideas that capture the attention of people around an idea or news event. With social media, you may find some of your friends who simply can't resist sharing a meme or two with you.
And if a meme seems particularly outrageous or upsetting, you can always use Google to check out the truth behind the picture.
Not a subscriber? Don't miss a single issue: