Meme | Definition, Meaning, History, & Facts (2024)

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Kara Rogers Kara Rogers is the senior editor of biomedical sciences at Encyclopædia Britannica, where she oversees a range of content from medicine and genetics to microorganisms. She joined Britannica in 2006 and...

Kara Rogers

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Top Questions

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 biological genes and considered them as being in control of their own reproduction.

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 conversation to television, e-mail, and the Internet.

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 cryptocurrency was originally created as a joke based on the “Doge” meme.

meme, unit of cultural information spread by imitation. 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 and thus serving their own ends. 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). 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.

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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. The process of transmission is carried out primarily by means of verbal, visual, or electronic communication, ranging from books and conversation to television, e-mail, or the Internet. Those memes that are most successful in being copied and transmitted become the most prevalent within a culture.

The exploration of relationships between cultural evolution, cultural transmission, and imitation has led to intriguing theories about memes. For example, various ideas have emerged about the nature of memes, such as whether they are beneficial, neutral, or harmful. Memes may be interpreted as being inherently harmful, since, according to some scholars, memes are parasites or viruses of the mind; once assimilated into the human mind, their chief purpose becomes their own replication, with humans having little or no control over them. Some memes, however, are benign or beneficial but can become dangerous because, after they have been seeded in the human mind, they lend themselves to being misused or abused. For example, although memes associated with religious or political ideas may benefit the people who carry them, those same memes, when imposed on people whose religious or political memes are different, may cause harm, such as through the loss of religious traditions or social or political stability. Memes associated with religious or political ideas may also be abused, as in the case of religious cults or extremist groups, which can result in the death of individuals. Beneficial memes, on the other hand, could include those that promote human health and survival, such as memes associated with hygiene.

In the early 21st century, Internet memes, or memes that emerge within the culture of the Internet, gained popularity, bringing renewed interest to the meme concept. Internet memes spread from person to person through imitation, typically by e-mail, social media, and various types of Web sites. They often take the form of pictures, videos, or other media containing cultural information that, rather than mutating randomly, have been deliberately altered by individuals. Their deliberate alteration, however, violates Dawkins’s original conception of memes, and, for that reason, despite their fundamental similarity to other types of memes, Internet memes are considered by Dawkins and certain other scholars to be a different representation of the meme concept.

Kara Rogers

Meme | Definition, Meaning, History, & Facts (2024)

FAQs

Meme | Definition, Meaning, History, & Facts? ›

meme, unit of cultural information spread by imitation. 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.

What was the original meaning of meme? ›

In French, the word “même” translates to “same” and the Greek word “mimoúmai” means “to imitate.” In his book, Dawkins said, “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.” He wanted to use a monosyllable that sounded like “gene.” Dawkins ...

What is the official meaning of meme? ›

meme \MEEM\ noun. 1 : an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture. 2 : 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.

What is the story behind the meme? ›

The word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene as an attempt to explain how aspects of culture replicate, mutate, and evolve (memetics). Emoticons are among the earliest examples of internet memes, specifically the smiley emoticon ":-)", introduced by Scott Fahlman in 1982.

What does a meme symbolize? ›

A meme is a concept or idea that spreads virally from person to person. The most popular memes are usually found on the internet and may be images, videos, phrases, or hashtags. They often convey a humorous point of view, cultural reference, or satirical message.

Why do they call it meme? ›

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 biological genes and considered them as being in control of their own reproduction.

What is the most iconic meme? ›

One of the most popular memes of all time, “success kid” uses a 2007 photo taken of a little boy with a clenched fist and determined expression. It is almost always used to display small successful moments or “wins” that happen to someone throughout a normal day like getting an extra chicken nugget in a fast-food meal.

Why do we call them meme? ›

Dawkins needed a noun to describe this concept of the transmission of an idea. He initially toyed with the Greek word mimeme, meaning imitation, but he wanted something shorter that gestured to the English gene. He landed on meme.

What is the difference between a gif and a meme? ›

Gifs and memes are very similar. The only difference is that gifs are animated and move, while memes are usually static. Recently though, videos, gifs and images have all been used to make memes.

What is the full word of meme? ›

Origin of meme1. First recorded in 1976; coined by British evolutionary biologist C. Richard Dawkins (born 1941), shortening of Dawkins's original creation mimeme, which was based on Greek mī́mēma “imitation, copy; artistic representation,” but which Dawkins also wanted to look and sound like gene; mimesis ( def )

Who is the father of memes? ›

Although Richard Dawkins invented the term meme and developed meme theory, he has not claimed that the idea was entirely novel, and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past.

What is meme theory? ›

Memetic theory, or memetics, is a scientific field related to how units of information evolve and replicate. These units of information, called memes, undergo a process of natural selection comparable to that of genes.

What does meme mean in America? ›

A meme is something such as a video, picture, or phrase that a lot of people send to each other on the internet. The image quickly became a meme. Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

What is the goal of a meme? ›

Memes have become a very common part of social media culture. You can find them just about anywhere: Twitter, Instagram, maybe even MySpace. Adults may not understand why they are so popular and why this generation seems to be so infatuated with them. The main purpose, of course, is entertainment.

What does the 🤝 mean? ›

The 🤝 emoji represents the same ideas as a real-life handshake—it can be a greeting, a sign of an agreement, or a symbol for a truce. In almost every case, respond to the 🤝 emoji by sending another one back.

What is the biological meaning of meme? ›

A meme could consist of a single word, or a meme could consist of the entire speech in which that word first occurred. This forms an analogy to the idea of a gene as a single unit of self-replicating information found on the self-replicating chromosome.

Why is meme spelled that way? ›

Origin of the Word “Meme”

Richard Dawkins, a British evolutionary biologist, first used the term meme in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene. The word meme was influenced by the word gene and is the shortened version of mimeme. It was derived from the ancient Greek word “mīmēma,” which means “imitated.”

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