Where did the word meme come from?
The word meme comes from the ancient Greek word “mimeme,” which means “imitated thing.” Some who have written about the concept point out its similarity to a gene. Memes self-replicate and mutate as time passes, like a gene. They also drive the culture forward in the same way that genes drive the human race forward.
Where did all the memes come from?
The word meme is a neologism coined by Richard Dawkins. It originated from Dawkins's 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins's own position is somewhat ambiguous: he welcomed N. K. Beside above, what was the original meme? One of the earliest memes born into the world of digits and pixels was actually a baby.
Where does the "meme" name origins from?
The word meme originated with Richard Dawkins ' 1976 book The Selfish Gene . Dawkins cites as inspiration the work of geneticist L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, anthropologist F. T. Cloak, and ethologist J. M. Cullen.
Where do internet memes come from?
Two Reddit and 4chan communities are especially good at spreading and “weaponizing” them. The word meme was coined by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, in which he suggested that ideas could replicate, evolve, and enter popular culture in a process analogous to the way genes spread.
What is a meme?
A meme is a unit of cultural information spread by imitation.
What is the origin of the term meme?
The term meme was introduced in 1976 by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. He conceived of memes as the cultural parallel to biologica...
How are memes made?
The process of meme transmission is carried out primarily by means of verbal, visual, or electronic communication, ranging from books and conversat...
How have memes affected society?
Internet memes have been shown to wield immense cultural and social power due to their ubiquity. For example, the successful Dogecoin cryptocurrenc...
Where did the word "meme" come from?
Where Did the Word “Meme” Come From? The first published case of the word meme (pronounced “Meem,” not me-me), dates back to Richard Dawkins’ 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. Dawkins referred to it as a “Mimeme”—a word derived from Greek that means “that which is imitated.”. The word was then abbreviated to just “meme” due to its similarity to ...
What is a meme?
So, put simply, a meme is to an idea what a gene is to a physical trait. And much like how genes and physical traits evolve through natural selection, Dawkins believed that anything capable of undergoing evolution—like memes and ideas—also did so through natural selection. This is where the modern form of the word “meme” is derived—the idea ...
What Were The First Internet Memes?
The first viral internet meme can be pinned back to a particular dancing baby that was spread around the internet, before finally appearing on an episode of Ally McBeal.
What is the evolution of memes?
One significant case of evolution in a meme would have to be LOLCats and the whole language surrounding the meme itself. LOLCats use a creative style of spelling with their memes, called lolspeak, personifying cats depicted in images. Using spelling mistakes and improper tenses to make sentences in a common structure, where “Can I have a cheeseburger?” would translate to “i can has cheezberger.”
Why is meme abbreviated as "meme"?
The word was then abbreviated to just “meme” due to its similarity to the word “gene.”. Dawkins coined the term because he was trying to figure out whether there was a measurable unit describing how ideas spread and propagated through generations. So, put simply, a meme is to an idea what a gene is to a physical trait.
Why do memes go viral?
This is partly due to how fast the internet moves (there’s always something new to grab your attention) and partly because of how easy it is to create memes.
What is the meme about hamsters?
It was a website that featured rows of animated GIF hamsters dancing to a sped up version of “Whistle Stop”—a song used in the credits of Walt Disney’s Robin Hood. The site was created by a Canadian art student in a competition with her sister and a friend in 1998, to see who could generate the most web traffic online.
When did memes start?
While memes today are recognized as amusing or interesting items that spread widely through the internet, the word itself dates to the 1970s . Originally "memes" were conceptualized as units of cultural transfer, and could be boiled down to "ideas that catch on and pass between people via culture."
What is a meme?
The new sense of meme made its Merriam-Webster debut in 2015, defined in full as "an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media.".
How do memes propagate themselves?
Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. This dictionary defines Dawkins' sense of meme as "an idea, behavior, style, ...
What was the first cynical pacifism?
The first was a kind of cynical pacifism, or what one might call an unashamed lack of patriotism. — Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger II, 1991. A decade into the future, and hiphop has thrown its code indiscriminately into the meme pool—it is immanent, endemic, ubiquitous. — Jeff Yang, The Village Voice, 23 Nov. 1993.
What does meme mean?
Meme as we most often encounter it these days is used to refer to "an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video)," as our definition puts it, "that is spread widely online especially through social media."
Why did Girard create the baby?
LEFERVE: Girard created the baby to show off his animation software. It worked. Now, zillions of the copies of the diapered dancer animate computer screens across the Internet.
When was the word "dawkins" coined?
Although Dawkins had coined the word in a 1976 book, it was more than 20 years before the accumulation of examples of the word in use demonstrated that it was a fully established term in the language. Here's the kind of evidence that paved the way for the word's dictionary debut:
How did memes spread?
Internet memes spread from person to person through imitation, typically by e-mail, social media, and various types of Web sites.
Who created the meme?
The term meme (from the Greek mimema, meaning “imitated”) was introduced in 1976 by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his work The Selfish Gene. Dawkins conceived of memes as the cultural parallel to biological genes and considered them, in a manner similar to “selfish” genes, as being in control of their own reproduction ...
What is meme in culture?
Within a culture, memes can take a variety of forms, such as an idea, a skill, a behaviour, a phrase, or a particular fashion. The replication and transmission of a meme occurs when one person copies a unit of cultural information comprising a meme from another person.
How do memes carry information?
Understood in those terms, memes carry information, are replicated, and are transmitted from one person to another, and they have the ability to evolve , mutating at random and undergoing natural selection, with or without impacts on human fitness (reproduction and survival).
What is imitation in psychology?
Imitation, in psychology, the reproduction or performance of an act that is stimulated by the perception of a similar act by another animal or person. Essentially, it involves a model to which the attention and response of the imitator are directed. As a descriptive term, imitation covers a wide…
What is meme transmission?
The process of meme transmission is carried out primarily by means of verbal, visual, or electronic communication, rang ing from books and conversation to television, e-mail, and the Internet.
Is meme theory theoretical?
The concept of the meme, however, remains largely theoretical. It is also controversial, given the notion of selfishness and the application of the concept to the evolution of cultures, which formed the basis for the field of memetics.
How long has memes been around?
It’s been forty-two years since Dawkins gave birth to the idea of a meme as a “cultural gene.” That’s about a million lifetimes for internet memes. As the definition of a meme has evolved, does it still make sense to think of them as the genetic material of our wired culture? Perhaps the most obvious difference between genes and memes, says McCulloch, is that “It’s a lot easier to have a meme and propagate it than it is to raise a child.”
What was the first image based meme?
Soon enough, people incorporated images into internet memes. Remember the Dancing Baby, that 3D rendering of a baby boogieing to a Swedish rock song ? That’s one of the first image-based internet memes, which spread primarily through email chains.
What is a meme in Dawkins' sense?
In Dawkins’ sense, a meme is simply an idea; it could be anything from fashion to a catchphrase to a method of building arches. So, how did we get from that to… this?
What does the word "mimeme" mean?
Etymology: An evolutionary biologist blended the ancient Greek word mimeme —meaning something imitated —with the English word gene, to set the stage for LOLcats, Success Kid, Rickrolling, and so, so much more.
When did the college freshman meme come out?
The "College Freshman" meme first hit Reddit in June 2011, and Kiritsy took to his blog a month later to 'fess up that the picture was of him. However, our research failed to find any kind of recent social media presence for Kiritsy. 06. of 10.
Who is the scumbag Steve meme?
The man behind the meme is Blake Boston, who was once a member of the rap group Beantown Mafia. Blake says no one really recognizes him from the meme these days...although something tells us he wishes they did. You can follow him on Twitter, where he goes by the handle Scumbag Steve (Real) and mostly rails against Donald Trump.
What is the bad luck Brian meme?
The Bad Luck Brian meme came about in 2012, and it shows a kind of dorky-looking blond guy along with a caption about something disappointing or tragic that happened to him . The image was uploaded to Reddit by Brian's friend, who thought the high school portrait was too funny not to share. The real Brian continues to capitalize on his meme moniker by operating both a Facebook fan page and a YouTube channel.
What is the OAG meme?
Dubbed "Overly Attached Girlfriend (OAG)," the meme was omnipresent for several years. Walker frequently posed for photos with fans, raised money for charity, made funny YouTube videos, and was generally very approachable and good-natured about her status as the OAG.
Who is the girl in the Good Girl Gina meme?
Good Girl Gina is the girlfriend everybody wants to have: she's gorgeous, cool, and down with a little kink. The person behind the meme is Emma Kathrine, a Danish model who had posed for this image for a photographer, who then sold it as a stock image.
How old was Sammy Griner when he started his Go Fund Me?
We're not sure what he's doing at the moment, but in 2015, when he was eight years old, Griner leveraged his internet fame to raise over $90,000 in a Go-Fund-Me for his father, who needed a kidney transplant.
The Origin of Memes
The Internet and A New Meaning of 'Meme'
- But as all this memeuse was going on, a new use was bubbling up—the one that in more recent years has become the dominant one. The first instance of this use that we were able to find in the Nexis database of thousands of mostly news publications is a 1998 interview on CNN: The particular meme discussed in the interview is believed my many to be the first meme, in the mod…
The Evolving Use of 'Meme'
- These days memeis evolving semantically again, which seems like an appropriately meme-y thing to do. We've spotted it functioning as a verb: And also being blended with other words, like fantastic: Of course, these are memes (sense 1) that have yet to catch on—but we'll be watching to see if they do. MORE TO EXPLORE: The Internet and the Dictionary