Meme

{{bronze}}{{sociology}}
{{cquote|We may be at a threshold. In the past, I would’ve been tempted to say, about the Internet, that although everybody has a megaphone, in many cases it’s a quiet one. You can put up a YouTube video, but who’s going to watch it? Now, however ridiculous what you’re saying is, if you make it memetically successful, something really bad can spread through the culture.|||Richard Dawkins<ref>[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/trolls-for-trump Trolls for Trump], The New Yorker</ref>}}
{{cquote|Free will is a myth. Religion is a joke. We are all pawns, controlled by something greater: Memes. The DNA of the [[Soul]].|||Monsoon, ''{{wpl|Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance}}}}''
In scientific contexts, a '''meme''' is an idea, belief, or behavior that spreads from person to person within a society. The term was coined by [[Richard Dawkins]] in his book ''The Selfish Gene'' in 1976.<ref>Richard Dawkins. [http://www.rubinghscience.org/memetics/dawkinsmemes.html Memes: The New Replicators], ch. 11 in ''The Selfish Gene'' (1976)</ref> Dawkins proposed the idea that [[society|social]] information could change and propagate through a culture in a way similar to genetic changes in a population of organisms - i.e., [[evolution]] by [[natural selection]]. Sticking with its roots in genetics and evolution, the term is derived from the word [[gene]], which is a unit of hereditary biological information made of [[DNA]]. Compared to a gene, which has a physical existence within a cell nucleus, a meme is far more abstract and this has led to accusations that "memetics" isn't really science.

==Memeplexes==
The idea was subsequently developed to include political philosophies and [[religion]]s, which were named ''memeplexes'', because they contain vast numbers of interacting memes. Memes that interact favourably will form strong memeplexes, while memeplexes will resist incompatible memes. A political memeplex valuing authority of thought would be incompatible with memes valuing individuality of thought, for example. This goes some way to explaining the polarisation of thought on the [[political spectrum]].

Like genes, memes may be useful, negative or neutral. For example, political philosophies - or indeed any [[philosophy]] including the [[philosophy of science|philosophies of science]] - are also memes or memeplexes.

Religious [[mythology]] is part of the memeplex of religion, as would be the idea that one ''needs'' religion.  In the same way that Dawkins' "selfish genes" would propagate through populations for their own benefit and not for the benefit of the organisms that carry them, memeplexes propagate through society irrespective of their value to the society. Enduring negative memeplexes are sometimes called "mind viruses"; with [[atheist]] proponents of memetics (e.g. Dawkins himself) citing [[Christian]] [[fundamentalism]] as one such example.

By the 2020s, far-right social media personalities accused ideas they disagreed with of being a "woke mind virus," paralleling turns in Dawkins' own politics.

==Internet memes==
The [[internet]] has been a source for the creation and propagation of many new memes — the majority of which are {{wpl|snowclones}} on image macros. On the internet an idea can be developed and quickly acquire modifications from users around the world, such that the root idea becomes the basis for multiple spin-off ideas, subsets of ideas, and other similar iterations.  In this sense, a "meme" evolves, taking on a life of its own through the contributions of users of varied cultural backgrounds.  Furthermore as large parts of the Internet are durable there is a permanent record of how the memes changed and developed. 

Most memes are humorous in nature.  "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" was an early internet meme, and "lolcats" was a popular emergent meme. Other memes focus on potential dangers, such as cell phones causing fires at gas pumps. Memes, like fads, rapidly lose their value weeks after being created, even days. (see: [[Reddit]], [[4chan]])

Many memes are appropriated or used by the [[far-right]] to radicalize young people online. Far-right memes often combines recruitment tactics with viral advertising and generally promotes toxic elements of internet culture (mainly [[Gamergate|gamer]] culture), [[misogyny]], [[homophobia]], and [[antisemitism]]. Examples of right wing memery include [[Pepe the Frog]] and memes aimed at insulting [[Social justice warrior|"SJWs"]].

The existence of memes has led to gatekeeping from certain toxic individuals, who believe that allowing a greater number of people to learn about memes through exposing them to the mainstream would be considered an infringement upon their "meme culture". Often, these individuals may resort to harassment or bullying as a method of attempting to safeguard their "meme culture" from people who they consider to be "normies". This feeling may stem from a desire to keep memes solely within the individual's group.{{cn}}

The pronunciation of "meme" is itself a meme,<ref>[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/maymay "Maymay"]. ''KnowYourMeme''.</ref> causing a lecture from the [[Beeb]].<ref>Mike Wendling (September 6, 2017). [https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-41163774 "How do you pronounce 'meme'?"]. ''BBC News''.</ref>

==Memetics: Science, pseudoscience, or protoscience?==
[[File:Richard Dawkins' bad memes.png|thumb|[[Richard Dawkins]]' greatest achievement.]]
A "scientific" study of memetics was attempted with the establishment of the ''Journal of Memetics'', which lasted from 1997-2005.<ref>[http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/ ''Journal of Memetics'']</ref> While memetics has gained a few boosters in fields that study culture such as social psychology, sociology, and anthropology, it has largely been ignored as a methodological approach or met with harsh criticism. In the final issue of the ''Journal of Memetics'', Bruce Edmonds argued that memetics had "failed to produce substantive results," writing "I claim that the underlying reason memetics has failed is that it has not provided any extra explanatory or predictive power beyond that available without the gene-meme analogy."<ref>Edmonds, B. (2005). [http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/2005/vol9/edmonds_b.html The revealed poverty of the gene-meme analogy – why memetics per se has failed to produce substantive results.] ''Journal of Memetics'', 9, 2005.</ref> 

A common criticism of memetics is that the meme is a more primitive version of the concept of "sign" in semiotics repackaged in biological and evolutionary language.<ref>[http://cdclv.unlv.edu/pragmatism/kilpinen_memetics.html Memetics: A Critique] by Erkki Kilpinen</ref><ref>Kalevi Kull. [http://www.zbi.ee/~kalevi/copytr.htm Copy vs. Translate, Meme vs. Sign.] European Journal for Semiotic Studies 12(1), 101–120 (2000).</ref> Luis Benitez-Bribiesca has criticized memetics for lacking a well-formed definition of "meme" and argued that the high rate of "mutation" as proposed by the memeticists would lead to a "chaotic disintegration" of culture rather than a progressive evolution. (Not to mention denouncing it as a "[[pseudoscience|pseudoscientific]] dogma.")<ref>Luis Benitez-Bribiesca [http://www.mendeley.com/catalog/essays-memetics-dangerous-idea/ Memetics: A Dangerous Idea.] ''Interciencia'', vol. 26, no. 1, 2001, pp. 29-31</ref> Benitez-Bribiesca's criticisms concerning fidelity and the ill-defined nature of memes feature in many other critiques of memetics as well. Dawkins argues that the fidelity is high enough for memetic copying to work in accordance with evolutionary processes.<ref>Richard Dawkins. [http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html Viruses of the Mind], ch. 3 pt. 2 in ''A Devil's Chaplain''</ref> Dan Sperber and Scott Atran reply that high fidelity copying is the exception and not the rule in cultural transmission.<ref>Dan Sperber. [http://www.dan.sperber.fr/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/meme.pdf An Objection to the Memetic Approach to Culture.] in Robert Aunger ed. ''Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science''. Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 163-173</ref><ref>Scott Atran. [http://sitemaker.umich.edu/satran/files/human_nature_01.pdf The Trouble with Memes: Inference versus Imitation in Cultural Creation.] ''Human Nature'' 12(4):351-381, 2001.</ref> Another problem concerning fidelity is the reconstructive nature of [[memory]]. Because memory [[confabulation|does not store an exact copy of information]], we can expect fidelity to decrease both in the process of "copying" or imitating memes from person-to-person and in the process of each individual recalling memes from memory. Atran also notes that memetics attempts to (and fails to) circumvent the [[evolutionary psychology|evolved cognitive architecture]] of the mind. Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson claim that population thinking is more important than a model of genetic inheritance as an evolutionary analogy to cultural evolution.<ref>Boyd and Richerson. [http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu/rgoldsto/courses/concepts/CambMeme.pdf Memes: Universal Acid or Better Mousetrap?] in Aunger (2000).</ref>

The issue of the definition of meme features in most of the above criticisms as well. What is, or is not, a meme? Does the meme "carve nature at its joints"? We know, for example, that computer viruses can follow genetic and evolutionary algorithms.<ref>Sadia Noreen et al. [http://nexginrc.org/nexginrcAdmin/PublicationsFiles/gecco09-sadia.pdf Evolvable Malware], in ''RAID: 12th International Symposium On
Recent Advances In Intrusion Detection'', 2009.</ref> But how far can this application be extended into the cultural realm? Mesoudi, Whiten, and Laland argue that advances in modern genetics have chipped away at the definition of the "gene" as a discrete unit and so the same criticism might be applied to genetics, but it is still a useful field. However, they also note some of the successes of non-memetic cultural evolutionary models such as Boyd and Richerson's population thinking approach in classifying archaeological artifacts.<ref>Mesoudi, Whiten, and Laland. [http://bec.ucla.edu/papers/Mesoudi_2.5.07.pdf Towards a uniﬁed science of cultural evolution.] ''Behavioral and Brain Sciences'', (2006) 29, 329 –383</ref> Jeremy Burman claims that the meme was just a metaphor that got taken seriously and [[reification|reified]] by a few too many people.<ref>Jeremy Trevelyan Burman. [http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/POSC_a_00057 The Misunderstanding of Memes: The Biography of an Unscientific Object, 1976-1999.] ''Perspectives on Science'' 2012, vol. 20, no. 1</ref> Many of the criticisms listed above, however, assert that whether the "meme" itself can be found or said to "exist" is irrelevant to its usefulness as it fails to provide a useful framework or systematic set of [[falsifiable]] predictions due to the circularity in the definition of fitness. (How do we know which memes are the most fit? The ones that spread the most are the fittest. And which memes spread the most? The ones that are the fittest, of course!)

===Resemblances to genetics===

Memetics does not offer a complete analogy to genetics. Genetics involves a clear separation between genes, genotypes, and [[phenotype]]s. A gene is a proxy code for the phenotype, and the phenotype - not the gene - experiences biological [[selection pressure]]. This is what allows [[biology | biological]] natural selection to take place based on random mutation and inheritance of genetic code. A "meme", however, combines in one jumble the three concepts - it acts as a gene but is also its own phenotype. Without this distinction, the evolution of memes is more [[Lamarckism | Lamarckian]] than [[Darwin]]ian - resembling the evolutionary processes operating on {{wpl | acquired characteristics}} in [[linguistics | languages]] rather than the evolutionary mechanisms in biology. This should come as little surprise to those who consider that Dawkins proposed the concept of memes as a rough metaphor of genetic information-transmission, rather than as an exact scientific parallel. Dawkins emphasized the features in genetics that involve passing on information, and thus made a fairly legitimate comparison to how humans share and adapt ideas.<ref>
Compare: {{Cite book
|last= Dawkins
|first= Richard 
|authorlink= Richard Dawkins 
|title= The Selfish Gene 
|publisher= Oxford University Press 
|year= 1989 |edition= 2 
|isbn= 0-19-286092-5 |page= 192 
| chapter= 11: Memes: the new replicators
|url= https://books.google.com/?id=WkHO9HI7koEC&pg=PA192 
|quote= I think that a new type of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet. [...] It is still in its infancy, stlll drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene panting far behind. [...] The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of ''imitation''.
}}
</ref>
However, the similarities don't go all the way. Memetics exemplifies in some ways a different type of evolutionary change.

===Resemblance to folklore===
In fact, as an object of study, [[folklore]] comes closest to the subject proposed by the notion of memes.  (For the idea of the "meme" as it has developed popularly, "folklore" is just the original name.)  Folklorists have always paid attention to the ways that folk culture, arts, and traditions are handed down from one person to another and from one generation to the next.  They hit upon the concept of the ''folk process'': the way in which folklore is preserved, edited, and amended in the process of its transmission, a process that keeps the folk culture relevant and useful as it is transmitted.  

The folklorists blinkered themselves early on by their insistence on exclusively oral transmission and arbitrary esthetic preferences for the "authentic".  It wasn't until the 1970s and afterwards that folklorists realized that folklore was also being created by popular interactions with and responses to mass culture.  The folklorists also learned to unsee the sharp distinction between the oral, handmade, and "authentic" versus published and mass-produced cultural artifacts.  Technology was turning this into a continuum.  Folklore could be spread by self-published broadsheets, by photocopier and fax machine, by email, and on the Internet.  (<small>Just like some folks took a while to figure out that folk music could be played on electric guitars.</small>)

When the subject matter of folklore is expanded this way, it would appear in some ways to swallow the idea of the meme.  At minimum, folklore offers an alternative vocabulary to discuss the preservation, alteration, and expansion of cultural ideas in the process of their transmission, one that does not need biological metaphors.

==See also==
*[[Goat]] (pronounced ''"meme"'' in Tok Pisin)<ref name="MEME">[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/meme Wiktionary: "meme"]</ref>
*[[Breast]] (also pronounced ''"meme"'' in Turkish)<ref name="MEME"/>
*[[Urban myth]]
*[[Folklore]]
*[[Viral]]
*[[Information theory]]

==External links==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/19990508210223/http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dennett/dennett_p2.html The Evolution of Culture], talk by [[Daniel Dennett]] with a [https://web.archive.org/web/20120208194808/http://www.edge.org/discourse/evolutionofculture.html reply by Jaron Lanier.]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20060110072125/http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge1.html Spare Me Your Memes], debate between Jaron Lanier and Charles Simonyi and Mike Godwin
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20161218225049/http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/08/dreams-of-memes-and-replicator-machines/ Dreams of Memes and Replicator Machines], Evolving Thoughts
*[http://www.rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs24-memetics.html Memetics!] Rationally Speaking Ep. #24
*[http://www.zompist.com/memes.html The New Pseudoscience of Memes], Zompist
*[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolution-cultural/#Mem Memes] in the [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolution-cultural/ Cultural Evolution entry] in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
*Neuroanthropology: [https://neuroanthropology.net/2008/06/12/we-hate-memes-pass-it-on/ We Hate Memes, Pass It On], [http://neuroanthropology.net/2010/08/23/people-not-memes-are-the-medium/ People, Not Memes, Are the Medium!]
*C.R. Hallpike. [https://hallpike.com/Memetics.%20A%20Darwinian%20pseudo-science.pdf Memetics: A Darwinian Pseudoscience], in ''On Primitive Society, and Other Forbidden Topics'', 2011, pp. 104-127
*Abby Rabinowitz, [https://web.archive.org/web/20220122001931/https://nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/the-meme-as-meme-rp The Meme as Meme. Why do things go viral, and should we care?] in Nautilus, issue 23, April 2, 2015

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:Anthropology]]
[[Category:Internet culture]]
[[Category:Pseudoscience]]
[[Category:Psychology]]
[[Category:Science woo]]
[[Category:Sociology]]
[[Category:Memes| ]]
[[Category:Neologisms]]
[[Category:Folklore]]

Categories: Anthropology, Internet culture, Pseudoscience, Psychology, Science woo, Sociology, Memes, Neologisms, Folklore