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.
You must log in or register to comment.
Just because we have one common use of the word meme doesn’t mean it loses its older use.
Words can be context bound to mean different things at once.
The older use may be considered archaic but like the word “archaic” I happen to really like those words.
People posting funny images and calling them memes is a meme. And they don’t get it.
nobody tell op that language evolves, this happens all the time and there will eventually just be a new word for the old thing 🤭
Memes were first described in an obscure book that no one read except internet atheists to impress their virtual waifus.
Did you read it? Sorry I asked, it is an important philosophical treatise using the know how collected since Darwin. To call it obscure is like calling the bible, Jean-Paul Sartre or Shakespeare of no importance… but in this day and age, nothing surprises me.
I said obscure, not important.
Do you really believe that if you asked 1000 random people, just as many people who are familiar with the Bible, or Shakespeare would be familiar with The Selfish Gene?
It may be that important to YOU, which is fine, but to claim that it has the historical significance of the Bible, and to shut down any potential discussion with “Nah, you’re wrong and people are stupid.” Comes across as more arrogant and ignorant than scholarly.
Treatise. A treaty is a formal, binding agreement between states. I usually don’t comment on mistakes but if you want to be a pedantic ass about using words “correctly”, well, better not make mistakes like that.
I find it odd that if one guy just makes up a word, then that’s what it is, but if millions of people all use it daily, in a different way, they are wrong.
Read the book, you will be enlightened. & it wasn’t just one guy.
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.
Everything is fluid over time. Every word, every construct changes. Sometimes human gender even changes, which Dawkins himself struggles to comprehend.
It literally still works under the original usage with how it is commonly used today. Under Dawkins’ original definition, the only thing humans do that isn’t a meme is having kids. It’s any non-genetic information that is shared.
This inflation of an important idea is symptomatic for the degeneration of humanity.
Everything eventually does.
