This essay is about subversion. The concept of the meme has been working its way around the web for a while now, instantiating itself in Wired 's regular feature, Hype List , in articles , and in general currency. As David Bennahum writes at the top of each issue of Meme , a meme is a contagious idea that replicates like a virus, passed on from mind to mind. The tune you can't get out of your head, the phrase you keep using in your conversation, the image of the perfect donut - these are all memes, ideas which have passed from somewhere out there into your head and into your consciousness.
Transference is the essence of the meme.
The concept, we are told, originates in Richard Dawkins's 1976 book The Selfish Gene . The word 'meme' sounds like 'gene' and has similar properties. Our human capacity to communicate consists in our ability to transfer idea from one person to another. Not to say that such transference is perfect. We all know the story where the message gets changed as it is whispered ear to ear down a line of people.