Originally, meme was defined as the counterpart of the gene. From Wikipedia: "In the popular science book The Selfish Gene, published in 1976, the English term meme was coined by Richard Dawkins to describe the dissemination of cultural information, but in the course of the digital revolution it was used to describe a specific type of internet phenomenon.” Thus, today a meme is a photo of Kim Kardesian’s fat ar$e with a stupid text, not a philosophical concept. This inflation of an important idea is symptomatic for the degeneration of humanity.
I understand your irritation when the word is used for any and all text on images, but can you appreciate that for most memes, the word is being used for it’s intended purpose?
I’m thinking primarily of jokes that use templates. Mark Grayson asking a question and having his dad enthusiastically reply “That’s the neat part: you don’t!” contains a highly transmissible concept, and acts as a vector for transmitting a whole bunch of ideas that fit within that concept. Any time something feels like an elder or authority figure responding to concern or confusion in this unconcerned way, you can summarize the feeling with this simple hieroglyph.
Linguistically, I think that’s pretty awesome.