RELATED LITERATURE

The term “meme” was initially offered by Richard Dawkins in 1976. In his book, The

Selfish Gene, he proposed that the majority of human behaviors are formed in culture,

which are not inherited by genes but rather from imitating others, and called these

elements memes (according to the Ancient Greek word mīmēma ‘something imitated’).

Thus, memes are non-genetic behaviors or cultural ideas that are passed from person to

person, and they can determine how an organism behaves (Davison, 2012). Different from

the genetic behaviors, the main characteristics of memes are the speed of transmission and

the relative fidelity of form. In general, memes refer to all imitated behaviors or ideas that

are transmitted, either, online or offline, such fashion, language, religion, etc.

While this simple idea has been the source of much academic debate about what a

meme is and how it works, the word “meme” has been picked up by internet users around

the world (Shifman, 2013). As stated previously, online, a meme or “internet meme” is used

to describe the rapid uptake and spread of a ‘‘particular idea presented as a written text,

image, language ’move,’ or some other unit of cultural ’stuff’’’’ (Knobel and Lankshear,

2007).

Internet meme is a piece of culture, typically a joke, which gains influence through online
transmission – considered as the first definition of Internet meme was proposed by
PatrickDavidson (2009).

“memetics has uncovered theexistence of viruses of the mind”, wh

ich are infectious piece of our culture that spread rapidly
throughout the population, altering people‟s thoughts and lives.”
One of the earliest internetmemes was the emoticon (Davidson).
The “sideways smiley face” composed en
tirely of punctuation marks wascreated on 19 September 1982 by Scott E. Fahlman.
Emoticons display many definitecharacteristics of Internet memes in a very minimalistic
form. Thus, these emoticons became avehicle in communicating certain ideas

Memes are simple, succinct and explicit in their messages, and this cultural paradigm is a
reflection of the mentality of modern society – one that values entertainment, champions
materialism, and reinforces the need felt by people to remain relevant. Their accessibility
and ability to reach a huge audience within minutes (and within days, become part of the
internet lexicon) means that memes can also be used as propaganda tools that can easily
instil, and cement, beliefs that quickly become popular among cybernauts (a habitual user
of the internet).

A meme is a replicator of another kind. It is an idea, a thought, or a concept which can be

passed between minds. It can be anything from a catchy tune you adopt unwittingly, which
you keep humming subconsciously through slogan from a commercial, to intricate and
abstract ideas of grand design or the Big Bang. All of these have been passed into your
mind from someone else’s mind. Memes are often compared to viruses, replicating agents
which need a host (carrier) in order to replicate.

These four stages are crucial to understanding memes; thus, I elaborate each below.
Assimilation “A successful meme must be able to “infect” a new host, that is, enter into its
memory, and thus acquire its memotype9 form” (Heylighen and Chielens, 2008: 10) i.e. be
assimilated by the host. When a person is introduced to a new meme either by being told,
shown, etc, or by discovering it on his/her own, it needs to be noticed, understood and
accepted in order to assimilate it. To be noticed the meme needs to be salient enough to get
attention of the potential new host. Then it needs to be understood, which means that the
meme needs to be fitted into context with the rest of knowledgebase of the person. This
basically suggests that certain memes can be mutually exclusive e.g. atheism and
religiousness. And as the last step, the meme needs to be accepted by the host, making it
part of his cognitive structures. An idea which was noticed and understood by a potential
host can still be regarded as unbelievable, unreliable, or uncredible to assimilate it.

Retention

Throughout our lives, we are able to retain only limited only limited amount of information

in our memories, the rest are forgotten, either temporarily or permanently. The longer the

meme is retained in our memory, the higher are its chances of spreading further onto other

hosts. This is an individual dimension of the longevity characteristic established by

Dawkins (1989). Each day we come across hundreds or thousands of memes which we

assimilate even subconsciously only to forget them later. Example of this can be the news

we read on the internet or see on the television. Most of them we will not be able to recall in

few days.

Expression

“To be communicated to other individuals, a meme must emerge from its storage as

memory pattern or memotype and enter its mediotype phase, i.e. assume a physical shape
that can be perceived by others. This process may be called ‘expression’.” (Heylighen and

Chielens, 2008: 10) There are memes, which can be regarded as so important by its hosts

that they feel urge to express them very often and there are those which are kept as secrets

or considered to be too insignificant to even mention to someone. An example of the former

case can be a person telling all his friends about healthy lifestyle and as an example of the

former we can consider washing your hands on the toilet. The means of expression can

vary from speech, gesture, text, and drawings, to creating representations of the memes like

statues or other art artifacts. In order to express the meme the person does not need to be

aware of expressing it. For example a very common way of expressing the memes

unknowingly can be the way a person dresses and how he/she behaves in these clothes.

Transmission

At this stage, the appropriate way of transmission of the meme needs to be chosen. As

Heylighen and Chielens put it, “To reach another individual, an expression needs a physical

carrier or medium that is sufficiently stable to transmit the expression without too much

loss or deformation.” (Heylighen and Chielens, 2008: 10) This stage is a counterpart to

Dawkins’s fidelity and is crucial for successful spread of the meme, because it is at this

stage where the meme takes some form which it will reach its new potential hosts.

Regardless of what the meme actually meant to be prior to this step, this is the one where it

becomes a mediotype which will be further interpreted by the carries who will or will not

assimilate it based on how they will understand it. As an example of this we can imagine a

person attempting to describe an idea of his/her future house. The house does not exist yet

and so the person is the only one who knows exactly how the house is supposed to look.

Based on the fidelity with which he/she will be able to convey this idea to the architect the

project drawn by the architect will resemble the original idea described. The ways in which

the house can be described are numerous of course. It can be, described by words, drawn
in pen on a piece of paper, sketched in some computer program, or built from Lego blocks.

The person attempting to describe the house will use the way which he/she deems as the

most appropriate to convey the idea, based on if he is proficient with the computer

program, good in drawing, or eloquent.

Darwin’s theory of evolution was perfected and made accessible by Richard

Dawkins in
The Selfish Gene
. In that book, he connected the concepts of genes and modern
scientific developments to Darwin’s three evolutionary principles and idea of
replicators.Because he spent so much time studying, abstracting, and applying Darwin’s
principles, he
realized that genes did not have to be the only kind of replicator. Besides genetic
evolution,Dawkins recognized evolutionary characteristics in the development of
culture. Hehypothesized that just as a biological replicator exists (the gene), so a cultural
replicator
must exist (the meme) that follows Darwin’s evolutionary laws in order to cause culture to
evolve and change

Susan Blackmore applied Dawkins’ meme idea much like he had applied Darwin’s ideas.
She articulated how Dawkins’ memes must work, and proposed their imitation as the
distinction between humans and other organisms. Dawkins’ foreword to her book,
TheMeme Machine showed that he recognized her contributions as beneficial
developments ofhis ideas. In his presentation at the 2013 Saatchi & Saatchi
New Directors’ Conference,Dawkins acknowledged his theory’s inability to explain the
seemingly deliberate andcreative characteristics of modern Internet
memes. Nonetheless, he maintained thatInternet memes are replicators as he defined
them in
The Selfish Gene
Internet memes are problematic to Dawkins’ theory because
they appear to violatethe essential characteristics of evolutionary replicators (variation,
selection, and heredity)since they can only be described as deliberate and
creative. Dawkins insisted that Internetmemes are memes as defined in THE SELFISH
GENE but admitted that he could not explaintheir creative mutation. Random natural
selection was essential to the nature of replicators,thus the lack of it in Internet memes
could not be called an exception to the rule. If
Dawkins’ theory c
ould not explain the presence and spread of Internet memes, thenperhaps his treatment
of other memes was insufficient as well.

CHAPTER IIREVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

The story of memes is crucial to the understanding of the digital culture, and not only ascharacteristics of an
Internet subculture, but as a cultural artifact that is gaining new meaning andfunction as it is breaking more and
more into the mainstream. Borzsei (2013) states that thetechnological, sociological and cultural reason for the
emergence of Internet meme culture wasso prevalent today. His research focused on remixed Internet Memes
that is collaborative,absurdist humor in multimedia forms.
The term “meme” with the emergence of the Internet was also applied to content that
spread from user to user online. Shortly, memes was consisting of inside funny jokes. In fact,memes were
generated to show the cultural counter part of the genes. Its primary meaning was supposed to signify “a unit
of cultural transmission or a unit of imitation.” (Dawkins,
1976)Internet meme is a piece of culture, typically a joke, which gains influence through
onlinetransmission– considered as the first definition of Internet meme was proposed by PatrickDavidson
(2009). According to Brodie (1996), he claims that “memetics has uncovered theexistence of viruses of the
mind”, which are infectious piece of our culture that spread rapidly
throughout the population, altering people‟s thoughts and lives.”
One of the earliest internetmemes was the emoticon (Davidson). Smiley quickly spread to other communities
and it soon became a meme. The “sideways smiley face” composed en
tirely of punctuation marks wascreated on 19 September 1982 by Scott E. Fahlman. Emoticons display many
definitecharacteristics of Internet memes in a very minimalistic form. Thus, these emoticons became avehicle in
communicating certain ideas Next to the emoticons is experimentation with technology was the website Bert Is
Evil,which hosts images that can be considered examples of the first modern remixed Internet meme.It was
created by Dino Ignacio 1997, he is a Filipino artist and designer. Due to the Photoshop‟s accessibility (as a
creative tool) it resulted in increasing number of private images appearing online, right at the meme
community‟s disposal. The two famous instances Advice Dog and
LOLcats are both said to originate from 2006, and they proved very influential in shaping
today‟s meme culture. Evolving memes were the vehicle mostly for online jokes with little to no
serious content (Rushkoff 68). ). In the early 2010s, the Internet meme is one of the ways peopleare addressing
such issues. Internet memes also became a tool for lightening a political issues.
.
Some of the memes were used to illustrate a particular political statement according to their beliefs. Sometimes
it was used to deliver political issues in a light approach using internetmemes. This only shows the creative way
of delivering such issues and bringing it to norms as aone way of expression.“Not everything that lies in the
heart of every living thing are not a fire, not a warm breath, nor a “spark of life” But it is the information, words
and instructions”, Richard Dawkinsdeclared in 1986. Dawkins coined the term meme in his book, “The Selfish
Gene”; memes was originally used to describe packets of cultural information that was adopted by the
internet.Memetics was a theory of mental content based on analogy popularly recognized with Darwinian
evolution originates on Richard Dawkin‟s book of “Selfish Gene” in 1976. It was an approach to the cultural
information transfer. His examples was composed of catchy ideas in form of behavior, styles, beliefs, tunes,
catch-phrases, fashion etc.As a matter of fact, a meme is an idea that is imitated spreading from person
to personwithin a culture or subculture by a process of transmission that is mediated. An internet meme isa
reduced idea that are imitated and spread rapidly “from person to person” via
internet largelythrough internet-based email, blogs, forums, image-boards, social networking sites,
instantmessaging, and video streaming sites (Brunello 2012).

Eventually, internet memes are becomingthe spoken language into to the online community. It is now part of
our living, this can be greatlyrecognize as a part of the word of mouth that people tends to share and use as a
new form oflanguage.In 2012, the Internet memes have become a part of vocabulary for internet users,
andundoubtedly, one of the most widespread modes of online communication, and it is not only theemoticon
anymore. Actually, these are virus of the mind that is based on everyday-creativityagency that make them
evolve through the creative works of individuals that are present today.However, memes gained a peculiar form,
namely of images, catchphrases and videos that consistof a particular catchy idea that reify an active agent
in the pursuit of replication. According toProfessors Knobel and Lankshear, Dawkins posited that memes were
“substantial evolutionary
model of cultural development and change grounded in the replication of ideas, knowledge, and other cultural
information through imitation and transfer.”

Hence, it is not only the replicability

that needs to be taken into consideration when analyzing a meme‟s success, but also its remixing
qualities.A study conducted by Knobel and Lankshear in 2007 focused on internet memes defines
them as a “catchy” and widely propagated ideas or phenomena; it was generated out of the
networks of shared interests, experiences, habits and worldviews. Their approach focused onmemes cultural
phenomena. By means of content and discourse analysis they investigate some ofthe most popular internet-
memes. The outcome revealed that fecundity is improved when mememutates, as when people contribute to
their own version.According to Patel, m
emes are “recognizable, bounded phenomena that have material effects in the world and that can be
scrutinized,” and which develop through the production of additional copies. He mentioned the three attributes
that influence replicability which are fidelity,fecundity, and longevity. Fecundity refers to the degree of
reproduction and dissemination of ameme; successful memes must achieve a high degree of fecundity.
Longevity is also a keyelement of replicability because the longer a meme exists, the more recognized it
becomes, andthis recognition in turn enables easier reproduction, mutation, and dissemination .

Thus, an Internet meme, like the meme described by Dawkins, evolves through imitation, reproduction,and
mutation. It is this constant spread and alteration that makes Internet memes so popular.To keep up an internet
culture, one must show an alternative of communication, a cost-
effective way of mass advertising to improve students‟ media literacy the study
of signs/symbols(Kariko 2013). Through this, we are able to generate a new meaning. Memes contain
humor,universal emotions, social message, cultural message, political message etc. A study conducted by
Kariko (2013) states that through internet memes, people are capable in teaching a languagein the most
effective way. The
Independent
(http://www.independent.co.uk/) reports thatstudying memes and their cultural impact has now become a
legitimate area of research for someinstitutions of higher learning. The study deals with the semiotic meaning of
internet memes, onhow the image and the caption are used to create meanings to provide entertainment to
user;accompanied with variety of texts to create meanings that provide universal emotions (Kariko2013).
Sometimes, these captions only serve as a joke and entertainment purposes. This studydwells on the context of
the caption of specific memes and analyzes each on how it producesdifferent meanings. To sum it all
up, internet meme serves as a humorous way of delivering funwith context, words, images, meanings, symbols,
culture, popular culture, etc. The fact that itonly needs an image of something or someone accompanied with a
caption/text can generatedifferent meanings. This memes can be interpreted and customized anyway the user
wants it(Kariko 2013).Image macro is
a kind of Internet meme that start with an image and theme, such as “BadLuck Brian,” “Good Guy Greg,” or
“Philosoraptor”.

The year 2000s saw the development of

highly internet-specific meme production techniques especially image macros. Entering the
digital age, we can‟t deny the fact that internet memes are becoming part of our vocabulary.
According to Sean Rintel, one of the earliest forms of online memes was image macro – it is a
picture with superimposed text; the etymology of the name „image macro‟ is important to the
basic concept of templating and how online memes themselves came to be successful. Accordingto
Quickmeme, users are versatile in their meme us: they combine memes, they make themevolve with different
pictures or concepts, they use one meme against others. The meme issuccessful to the extent that people
participate by making more versions (Burgess 2008). Nevertheless, there similar things that can be observed
with Internet memes, they arecreated, reproduce by millions of enthusiast around the world.
 Memetics borrows from the theory of Darwinian evolution. It suggests that memes compete,
reproduce and evolve just as genes do. Only the strongest survive. So memes fiercely vie for space and
advantages in our brains and behaviors. The ones that succeed through widespread imitation
have best evolved for repetition and communication. A meme is not controllable by any one individual
– many people can simultaneously serve as hosts for it.

It can be difficult to further explain what might fall under the heading of “meme.” Commonly,
however, scientists note a meme may be a phrase, catchy jingle, or behavior. Dawkins hesitated to
strictly define the term, but he noted that tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, and ways of
making pots or building arches could all be memes. Memetics suggests that memes have existed for as
long as human beings have been on the planet.

Enter the internet

Today, the internet meme (what most people now just call a meme) is a piece of media that is copied
and quickly spread online. One of the first uses of the internet meme idea arose in 1994, when Mike
Godwin, an American attorney and internet law expert, used the word “meme” to characterize the
rapid spread of ideas online. He had noticed that, in disparate newsgroups and virtual communities,
certain posters were labeled as “similar to the Nazis” or “Hitler-like” when they made unpopular
comments. Godwin dubbed this the Nazi-comparison meme. It would pop up again and again, in
different kinds of discussions with posters from around the world, and Godwin marveled at the
meme’s “peculiar resilience.”

More than 20 years later, the word “meme” has become a regular part of our lexicon, and has been
used to describe everything from the Ermahgerd Girl to Crying Jordan to Gangnam Style.

In today’s world, any one meme has lots of competition. Americans spend, on average, 11 hours per
day interacting with digital media. Australians spend 10 hours per day on internet-connected devices.
Latin Americans spend more than 12 hours consuming some sort of media daily.

Around the world, people constantly receive thousands of photos, videos and other messages.
Determining which of these items captures the most attention could translate into significant
advantages for digital content creators.

Manipulating memes to go viral?

The internet meme and the scientific meme are not identical. The internet meme is typically
deliberately altered by human ingenuity, while the scientific meme (invented before the internet
became a thing) involves random change and accurate copying. In addition, internet memes are
traceable through their presence on social media, while scientific memes are (at least right now),
untraceable because they have no physical form or footprint. Dawkins, however, has stated that the
internet meme and the scientific meme are clearly related and connected.

What causes one meme to replicate more successfully than another? Some researchers say that
memes develop characteristics called “Good Tricks” to provide them with competitive advantages,
including:

1. being genuinely useful to a human host;

2. being easily imitated by human brains; and
3. answering questions that the human brain finds of interest.
First, if a meme is genuinely useful to humans, it is more likely to spread. Spoked-wheel wagons will
replicate quickly because early humans need to transport lots of freight easily. Second, memes that
are easy to copy have a competitive advantage over those that aren’t – a catchy hook like “WHO LET
THE DOGS OUT” is easier to replicate than the lines to U2’s “Numb” (called one of the toughest pop
songs to understand). Third, memes that answer pressing questions are likely to replicate. Peruse any
bookstore aisle and you will find numerous books about finding your purpose, figuring out the
meaning of life, or losing weight quickly and effectively – all topics of immense interest to many
people.

Memetics suggests that there are real benefits to pairing a strong meme (using Dawkins’ original
definition) with digital and other content. If there is a scientific explanation for strong replication,
marketing and advertising strategies coupled with strong memes can unlock the share-and-repeat
secrets of viral media.

The answer to such secrets may be found in songs like “WHO LET THE DOGS OUT? WHO-WHO-
WHO-WHO-WHO?” Are you humming it yet?

Today, a meme is commonly thought of as a variant of an image based on a common theme

that has spread widely on the internet. Memes are often humorous or ironic, but they are also
vehicles for political messages, used to spread aggressive or racist messages and to incite
hatred.

Several online communities focus on creating and spreading memes with the goal of making
an idea become viral—a process known as “attention hacking” or “weaponizing.” These
communities, on websites such as Reddit, 4chan, Twitter, and others, have become hugely
influential.

And yet little is known about the way memes spread or how they exert their influence.

An internet meme is a unit of information (idea, concept or belief), which replicates by passing on
via Internet (e-mail, chat, forum, social networks, etc.) in the shape of a hyper-link, video, image, or phrase. It
can be passed on as an exact copy or can change and evolve. The mutation on the replication can be by
meaning, keeping the structure of the meme or vice versa. The mutation occurs by chance, addition or
parody, and its form is not relevant. An IM depends both on a carrier and a social context where the transporter
acts as a filter and decides what can be passed on. It spreads horizontally as a virus at a fast and
accelerating speed. It can be interactive (as a game), and some people relate them with creativity. Its mobility,
storage, and reach are web-based (Hard disks, cell phones, servers, cloud, etc.). They can be manufactured (as
in the case of the viral marketing) or emerge (as an offline event taken online). Its goal is to be known well
enough to replicate within a group.

In general, characteristics of an IM are the same as the ones of a meme-virus, but IMs possess a unique way of
spreading and mode of mutation that is disjunctive among meaning and structure, to the point that changing
both would create something different. Nevertheless, an IM can be passed on conserving both, meaning and
structure, but changing the form. The form of the IM is most variable (e.g., the same scene with other
characters or other background will be the same). Additionally, it possesses its own method of mutability
depending on the context (e.g., people without internet will not be able to understand internet memes).
Following, the use of this recently coined definition of IM will be used in order to characterize two internet
memes, and exemplify how the developed academic definition can be used for media and meme studies.

The concept of meme is not a static concept. Even though the first definition of meme proposed by Richard
Dawkins in 1976, is the most used and quoted definition of a meme when referring to social, cultural and
internet phenomena analysis, it is a concept that has yet to evolve. Its former author transformed the meme
definition, and some theorists followed this change helping the creation of a new conception of the term meme.
This new definition allows the characterization of memes for studies in fields like communication, humanities
and social sciences, opening the path for a new research type in information and media content.

While referring to internet memes, it is possible to say that they perfectly fit in the epidemiologic theory of
memes, with certain characteristics that are only proper of its own kind, allowing the emergence of new
patterns of interchange, exchange and reproduction. Their themes can go from pure silliness to important social
changes and the social environment, while the places it strews take an influential role in their development,
pervasion, and decadence.

The creation of a definition and characterization of the IM not only approach the academic community to the
phenomenon, but also can work in the opposite direction, by letting the academy characterize other phenomena
in order to differentiate its patterns as memes or not memes, so it is possible to predict its behaviour in the
cyberspace.

An Internet meme can be almost any idea or concept expressed in some form of content on the
web, which is why it can be so completely difficult to drill down to a real definition. It can be a photo, a
video, a person, an animal, a fictional character, an event, a song, a belief, an action, a GIF, a
symbol, a word or anything else.

When one of these things is broad enough to be considered extremely relatable between most people
and has a humorous effect to it (like sarcasm or exaggeration), it often gets shared all over the
Internet. Mass sharing gives it its internet meme status.

Advice Animals are a common meme theme, which are images of animals that express reactions via
short text captions. The weird horse dance performed in Psy’s Gangnam Style music video that went
viral back in 2012 is even considered an Internet meme.

When something appeals to a very large number of people and spreads very fast across the internet
—sometimes even being altered through additional photos, videos, phrases or whatever — it’s
usually safe to say that that thing or idea is indeed an internet meme. To put it in the simplest of
words, you can consider an Internet Meme to just be something that goes insanely viral.

Every Internet meme has its own unique story. The best ones literally burst out of nowhere, only to
mysteriously show up and take over your Twitter feed, Facebook feed, Tumblr Dashboard or any
other social networking site you may be using within days of initial recognition by its first hundred of
thousands of sharers.

There’s one particular website, however, that is highly recommended to check out if you’re interested
in finding out the origin and history behind a particular meme. Part of the Cheezburger
Network, Know Your Meme specializes in tracking down Internet memes and the entire viral stories
behind them — sometimes right down to the creator, artist or photographer of a meme.
You can use the search bar on Know Your Meme to search for any particular meme of your choice. A
complete page of information, related memes, viral spread and even a timeline for search interest will
be displayed.

For example, here’s Know Your Meme’s page for the Gangnam Style meme. It’s a pretty lengthy
page, but it does a very good job at telling the entire story behind its virality.

Since new memes pop up every day out of nowhere, you may notice that not every meme’s page on
the site is fully complete. In fact, it may not even by on the site yet.

Where Can I Find Internet Memes?

If you want to know which memes are starting to trend as soon as they do, you better be active on
social media. You’re not going to find them by checking your email or reading your local news
website.

Being on Facebook and Twitter is a good start, but they can be a little slow at exposing the newest
Internet memes. Instead, you're probably better off with going where many of the best memes are
born:

4chan: There’s been a lot of criticism that the users of 4chan are rather unpleasant to interact with,
but if you want internet memes, this image-based community is where many of them are created.

Reddit: Like 4chan, Reddit is another social network that represents the birthplace of many memes.
Perhaps unlike 4chan, the Reddit community is very pleasant to interact with and helpful when
necessary. A pretty big chunk of internet users prefers visiting Reddit rather than 4chan.

Tumblr: A lot of stuff that first shows up on 4chan and Reddit eventually make their way to Tumblr
— a blogging platform that tends to be heavy on imagery and GIFs. It’s the perfect environment for
memes, and even though most memes may be seen on Reddit first, they tend to take over Tumblr
almost immediately after they’re discovered.

As an added bonus, you may also want to start taking YouTube more seriously by subscribing to
popular channels — especially those that cover newsworthy topics related to internet entertainment.

Before the Internet, pictures had to be taken on a camera, which would spend a couple days developing the
pictures in a darkroom, and then one copy of each picture was available to look at. Since the Internet, pictures
and videos have become more easily spread, and also used as blank slates for new memes. This has been the
most influential change since the coining of the term “meme.” Now, we can define an Internet meme as an
image, recreation, catchphrase, or other piece of media that circulates throughout the population as different
people mimic its form. As this definition of a meme is very broad, it covers a lot of ground. The Internet has
allowed the passing along of memes to be easier and quicker than ever before. On top of more people being able
to access the Internet, consumption and creation of Internet memes have skyrocketed with the launch of
YouTube in 2005.

Memes also encourage new social skills taught by participatory culture. Some of these skills include the ability
to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving, adopt alternative identities for the
purpose of improvisation, meaningfully sample and remix different forms of media, interact meaningfully with
tools that expand mental capacities, combine knowledge and collaborate with others towards a common goal,
follow the stream of stories and information across multiple forms of media, and travel across several diverse
internet communities while respecting others’ content and perspectives. Memes encourage social skills on the
Internet, because creating, viewing, or mimicking a meme involves communication, an intelligent idea
reflective of our culture, and innovation. It also doesn’t hurt that they’re hilarious.

SELF- EXPRESSION

We are social creatures who need and want to communicate with one another. Free
speech, self-expression, and socializing are no doubt huge benefits of social media.
Revealing our personal information establishes camaraderie, enables supportive
communities to flourish, and educates us about other people’s lives. 1

Just as face-to-face conversations migrated to the telephone over a century ago, then
to email and instant messaging within the last decades, conversations have now
migrated to social media websites. The Internet has given everyone the power, once
reserved for professional journalists, to reach thousands, maybe millions, of people.

Writing in the Content Standard, Linsey Covino-Deaso notes that current ebbs and
flows in the evolution of social media technology seem to reveal a trend towards non -
verbal communication in digitally mediated environments. In person, non-verbal cues
are those aspects of communication that convey the nuance of human sentiment: a slight
raise of an eyebrow or the twitch of a smirk.

In an age of fast-food content, fake news, and sensationalism, it’s easy to understand
how we may be craving the return of a little nuance in digital communication. A meme
provides a more complex yet concise and flexible expression of verbal and visual
sentiment that we can use to communicate in a manner that perhaps more closely
resembles the way in which we communicate in person.

Just as symbols that represent more complex ideas are some of the most efficient forms
of cultural expression we have, memes condense the richness and nuances of certain
sentiments into a single communicative unit. Combine this with a basic psychological
drive to create content as a form of expression and identity formation, and plenty
of sites that let you do so easily, and you have a potent formula for the proliferation of
memes.
“Meme” was coined by the often controversial evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The

Selfish Gene. In it, he states the following: 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. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I

want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate

mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to ‘memory’, or to

the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘cream’.

As stated, Dawkins was hoping that the word would be used as a unit of human cultural transmission,
such as a melody, fashion, or catch-phrase, with the idea evolving as it spreads and time
passes. This evolution is primarily spurred by the fact that people refine the memes or simply don’t
“copy” the information exactly when they transmit it to another human. This has since given rise to
other derivative words or phrases including:
 Memetics: which explores the transmission and evolution of cultural ideas in a scientific manner, though
often somewhat unsuccessfully with the “scientific” part.
 Meme Complex or memeplex: memes that have evolved into a symbiotic relationship with other
memes. In terms of internet memes, this would be like the relationship between a meme such as
“Herp/Derp” and various other meme elements that make up rage comics. In “real life” memes, this would
be like the combined ideas that together form a certain religion.
 Memotype: the information-content of the meme.
 Memeoid: people who are so ingrained with some meme that they are willing to sacrifice themselves as a
result of it, such as suicide bombers and the like. In a less extreme sense, it could be argued that every
single person on the planet is a memeoid of one type or another.
 Memetic Marketing: the use of memes to virally market some product or business, often using internet
memes.