WEB DESK: Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” in his 1976 bestseller The Selfish Gene, not knowing he was named the internet’s favorite pastime. Today, we’ve joyfully adopted the term.
Dawkins originally defined a meme as an idea, behavior, or style that spreads within a culture, similar to how genes transfer biological information. Think of it as cultural DNA, moving from brain to brain like a persistent mosquito.
Dawkins explained the definition to Neil deGrasse Tyson on StarTalk, calling it a “unit of cultural inheritance and the analog of the gene in cultural inheritance.” A meme can be anything that jumps from one IP address to another, embedding itself in our collective consciousness.
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Furthermore, imagine family heirlooms passed down through generations, but much more shareable. Some memes have high communicability, spreading quickly and widely, like a catchy tune. Units of culture can include tunes, ideas, catchphrases, clothes, etc.
According to Dawkins, the modern use of the term isn’t far from his original definition. He told Wired, “It’s anything that goes viral. In the original introduction to the word meme in the last chapter of The Selfish Gene, I used the metaphor of a virus. So when anyone talks about something going viral on the internet, that is exactly what a meme is and it looks as though the word has been appropriated for a subset of that.”
