Brenton
AhmedMeme
January 10th 2008 06:27
What is a Meme? A meme is a term invented by Richard Dawkins (most famous in recent times for his book ‘The God Delusion’, which means to describe any piece of information that can be carried onwards, and evolve into other forms. Some examples of Memes may include-
• Why did the chicken cross the road and other jokes ingrained in pop culture
• Archetypal figures such as ‘The Wizard’ or ‘The Hooker with a Heard of Gold’.
• Popular associations between a thing or person and a trait – the idea that foxes are sly, rabbits are nervous or Jews are thrifty.
• Reoccurring ideas or scenes used in various media – ‘magician saws a girl in half’, ‘nun having fun’, ‘mutton dressed as lamb.’
If this is still confusing have a quick look at the Wikipedia Meme Page – LINK.
To refresh – a meme in any piece of information that can be reproduced and adapted. Memes are often terribly influential. Things such as ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ (environmentalism), ‘Do you know who you’re in bed with?’ (AIDS awareness) and ‘Kevin ‘07’ or ‘New Leadership’ (Kevin Rudd’s campaign slogans) are memes that have been picked up, popularised and profoundly influential.
For this reason, a number of activist groups engage frantically with the idea of ‘meme factories’ creative well designed catch memes to spread influence throughout the world.
The most important thing about memes is the process of memetics, which studies the evolution of memes.
An example of this can be found here - This map shows how different pieces of information correspond to each other.
An example of a meme evolution can be seen in the Lolcats phenomenon.
STEP 1: A meme (a piece of information) is created either sporadically or through the combination of factors. Lolcats is born of a number of memes –
Meme 1 – The Internet meme of posting funny pictures of cats
Meme 2 - The meme of ‘captioning’ photographs.
Meme 3 – L337 Speak/Computer Speak.
These three things came together to form on new meme – the lolcat. This meme in itself evolved to a number of subgenres, such as lolgay and loltreck.
Meme may also be used to describe any messages or quizzes circulated across the internet.
Image by Helfy in Helfland Licensed under an Attribution No Derivs License.
• Why did the chicken cross the road and other jokes ingrained in pop culture
• Archetypal figures such as ‘The Wizard’ or ‘The Hooker with a Heard of Gold’.
• Popular associations between a thing or person and a trait – the idea that foxes are sly, rabbits are nervous or Jews are thrifty.
• Reoccurring ideas or scenes used in various media – ‘magician saws a girl in half’, ‘nun having fun’, ‘mutton dressed as lamb.’
If this is still confusing have a quick look at the Wikipedia Meme Page – LINK.
To refresh – a meme in any piece of information that can be reproduced and adapted. Memes are often terribly influential. Things such as ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ (environmentalism), ‘Do you know who you’re in bed with?’ (AIDS awareness) and ‘Kevin ‘07’ or ‘New Leadership’ (Kevin Rudd’s campaign slogans) are memes that have been picked up, popularised and profoundly influential.
For this reason, a number of activist groups engage frantically with the idea of ‘meme factories’ creative well designed catch memes to spread influence throughout the world.
The most important thing about memes is the process of memetics, which studies the evolution of memes.
An example of this can be found here - This map shows how different pieces of information correspond to each other.
An example of a meme evolution can be seen in the Lolcats phenomenon.
A Lolcat example can be seen here.
STEP 1: A meme (a piece of information) is created either sporadically or through the combination of factors. Lolcats is born of a number of memes –
Meme 1 – The Internet meme of posting funny pictures of cats
Meme 2 - The meme of ‘captioning’ photographs.
Meme 3 – L337 Speak/Computer Speak.
These three things came together to form on new meme – the lolcat. This meme in itself evolved to a number of subgenres, such as lolgay and loltreck.
Meme may also be used to describe any messages or quizzes circulated across the internet.
Image by Helfy in Helfland Licensed under an Attribution No Derivs License.
| 97 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
subscribe to this blog
GET PAID TO ANSWER SURVEYS
Comment by Arun On Technology
Thanks for the information on the origins of the word meme. Also if I believe Richard Dawkins is a long time friend of Charles Simoyni, the ex-Microsoft chief architect - more popularly known as the father of Microsoft Office.