# What exactly is a meme? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 19, 2003, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350 "2003-10-19T12:47:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bill\_H](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a5b964/32.png) [@Bill\_H](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_H)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2003, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/21 "2003-10-20T02:29:09Z")
**lucwarm** , _memes_ and _ideas_ may be similar, they are not identical. Take the words _beef_ and _bull_ for example. They may ultimately be talking about the same material or animal, but they describe different properties and uses of it. The dictionary sheds some light on this: meme: (biology) element of behaviour or culture, idea, etc, that can be considered to replicate itself as it is passed between individuals by non-genetic means idea: 1. The content of cognition; the main thing you are thinking about. 2. A personal view. 3. An approximate calculation of quantity or degree or worth. 4. Your intention; what you intend to do Not all ideas are memes. Though all memes are technically ideas, some are arguable. Fashion for example. Also, if you want to insist on dropping the word _meme_ as redundant, why not get rid of words like _thought_, _concept_, _view_, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2003, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/22 "2003-10-20T02:33:16Z")
If you look at religions as meme structures, you can better understand how they evolove through accretion and dissolution. For example, you can look at early Christianity. Before the time of Paul of Tarsus, it was tied into millennia of Jewish meme-structure. The dietary laws, the idea of Shabbot, the notion that YHVH was still the One God, all of them were still potent in the minds of the Apostles and all of them were being passed along to the converts. Paul decided that Christianity should break from the parent meme-organism and become more `pure’. He declared that Christ was the new Covenant and that to love him and to follow his words was enough to get you into Heaven. That simplicity made it more palatable to the Romans, who were losing their Classical state cults. Paul was an interesting figure, so I’ll keep with him for a while. He wrote letters to various people across the Empire, making sure the religion didn’t fragment as it traveled from the Middle East to Spain and the British Isles (the breadth of the Roman world). He effectively `re-innoculated’ the faithful, making them less likely to change the Word with the varied local religions they already knew of. Later on, Christianity accreted beliefs from the native religions of the realms Rome didn’t conquer. They did take the idea of the virgin birth and the crucifixion from elsewhere earlier (it’s prevalent as far east as India in some form), but Christmas was taken piece-by-piece from Germanic traditions. So was Easter. I think all of Christianity’s major holidays are repurposed pagan traditions, memes that have been accreted into the larger meme-structure of Christianity. So, what do memes help us predict? Well, I predict that any modern culture that gains a widespread acceptance of any meme that says people are more important than groups will see an upswing in the number of people practicing Buddhism and various Gnostic religions. Why? Those faiths fit like a key into a lock into any meme that glorifies individual pursuit of a religious goal. Individual meditation forms an important part of that whole group. That predicts not only the 1960s, but the 1850s and the rise of early Christianity in Rome. Remember, in the first century Christianity was a more-or-less mystical pursuit, complete with a secret brotherhood and a cult leader. When it was codified into a state religion under Constantine, the individual congregations joined under a catholic (all-encompassing) group that replaced more-or-less individual choices and pursuit with group choral singing and followship of one holy father (papa, or Pope). ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2003, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/23 "2003-10-20T02:51:42Z")
[Dr. Fun’s view on memes.](http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200302/df20030226.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Fatwater\_Fewl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/4491bb/32.png) [@Fatwater\_Fewl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fatwater_Fewl)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2003, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/24 "2003-10-20T02:54:11Z")
How much mean would a mean meme mean If a mean meme could meme mean? Could a mean meme meme as much mean As the Emperor of Ice Cream would mean to meme If his meme were to seem to mean To let be be finale of meme? IOW, why hasn’t the meme of meme memed itself more widely already amongst the general public? I’m undecided on what I think about this. Although the idea of memes might offer an explanation as to why such things as rhetoric, poetry, songs and music and, yes, tongue-twisters stick in people’s minds. I do like the idea of comparing memes to viruses rather than to genes. It seems to me there is more similarity there … a virus needs living tissue in order to reproduce, otherwise it just lies there; a meme would seem to need [the lifelike tissue of] a mind familiar with the language in which it’s spoken, read or heard to reproduce, otherwise it just lies there… ---
**Author:** ![lucwarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e19adc/32.png) [@lucwarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lucwarm)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2003, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/25 "2003-10-20T04:14:05Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Bill H. \* > \*\ ***lucwarm** , _memes_ and _ideas_ may be similar, they are not identical. Take the words _beef_ and _bull_ for example. They may ultimately be talking about the same material or animal, but they describe different properties and uses of it. > > . . . > > Also, if you want to insist on dropping the word _meme_ as redundant, why not get rid of words like _thought_, _concept_, _view_, etc. \*\* That’s not really my position, although admittedly I haven’t spelled out my position very carefully. I’m expressing skepticism of “meme” as a scientific concept. I’m happy to concede that “memes” exist, and that the word “meme” may have a unique meaning. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_H](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a5b964/32.png) [@Bill\_H](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_H)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2003, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/26 "2003-10-20T05:41:13Z")
**lucwarm** wrote > [@](#): > > I’m expressing skepticism of “meme” as a scientific concept. I definitely see your point. I’m not even sure I can define an exact meaning of the word. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2003, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/27 "2003-10-20T07:23:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Darwin’s Finch \* > **Of course, if one carries the analogy of “genetic-space” to that of “idea-space”, one can just simply state that “ideas” are the reproductive unit of “idea-space” (probably, _concept_ is a better unit than _idea_, though), and they are subject to a selective process, much as a genotype is subject to natural selection. Since all ideas are essentially subject to the same selective processes which determines if they will persist (a “good” idea) or not (a "bad’ idea), “meme” simply becomes redundant with “good idea”.** It doesn’t have to be a _good_ idea, just one that contains a mechanism for making lots of fairly good copies of itself. Take a (fictional) religious extreme, for example; the meme behind it may consist of something like: -The message is absolutely true and must not be doubted -The message is highly important and must be shared -Failure to comply with the above will result in dire consequences Now, quite aside from any metaphysical _truth_ that the ideas may chance to encompass, there’s not very much about it that can be termed ‘a good idea’, but because the message insists on its own veracity and importance, it must therefore be accepted as wholly true (or rejected), but having accepted that it is wholly true, one must also heed the instruction to share the message (and to ensure that the hearers of the message adhere to it in the same way). So, not necessarily a good idea, but an aggressively persistent, self-replicating one. ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2003, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/28 "2003-10-20T16:07:55Z")
As an historical footnote, while Dawkins may have coined the term “meme” in 1975 or 1976, I think the idea was repopularized in a series of science fact articles published in Analog magazine in the mid-80s. That’s were I first read about memetics, anyway. Analog is the historical successor to John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction. ---
**Author:** ![Dogface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2003, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/29 "2003-10-20T17:01:29Z")
If _Analog_ is the heir to _Astounding_ does that mean that it’s the current nest of Velikovskyism? The problem I have with “memes” is that it was really an analogous proposal. Then, as is typical, people who just don’t seem mentally equipped to handle analogues or metaphors began to willy-nilly and mindlessly transfer all traits of the “prototype” (genes) to the metaphor (memes). I’m surprised that Dawkins didn’t express regret at what happened to his idea, since Dawkins always struck me as a materialist, and “memes” have definitely moved into the realms of spiritualism or some other form of “non-material reality”. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Great\_Unwashed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_great_unwashed/32/4791_2.png) [@The\_Great\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Great_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2003, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/30 "2003-10-20T17:28:53Z")
**Dogface** , you got a cite for this _“memes” have definitely moved into the realms of spiritualism or some other form of “non-material reality”_? ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2003, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/31 "2003-10-20T17:49:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mangetout \* > **It doesn’t have to be a good idea, just one that contains a mechanism for making lots of fairly good copies of itself.** What makes a “good” idea, however, is often in the mind of the selector. If I think a concept is sound, I will retain it, and try to pass it on to others. If I think it is not so useful, I will reject it. And so on with every person which encounters a given “idea”. If enough people accept it, it would pretty much be “good” by default - to those who accept it, at least. > [@](#): > > \*\*Take a (fictional) religious extreme, for example; the meme behind it may consist of something like: > -The message is absolutely true and must not be doubted > -The message is highly important and must be shared > -Failure to comply with the above will result in dire consequences > > Now, quite aside from any metaphysical truth that the ideas may chance to encompass, there’s not very much about it that can be termed ‘a good idea’, but because the message insists on its own veracity and importance, it must therefore be accepted as wholly true (or rejected), but having accepted that it is wholly true, one must also heed the instruction to share the message (and to ensure that the hearers of the message adhere to it in the same way).\*\* The problem is that such a thing as religion does not spring into being all at once. In an analogy to mutation and selection, ideas are expounded, then gradually built upon and modified, until you reach the current sate. The individual components of a religious suite of ideas all began in the mind of _someone_. Someone got it into their head that the message was absolutely true. He (or she) felt that that was a viable concept - a “good idea”, so it spread (“Bad ideas”, not unlike deleterious mutations, take care of themselves). The “dire consequences” bit would likely have come into play as a means to ensure that the message is obeyed, thus it becomes a “good idea” for those wishing to enforce the message (“the message will be considered a good thing to obey if the consequences are dire”), as well as those following the message (“the consequences are dire, so it is a good idea to obey the message”). The message (or idea) does not exist independent of those who accept it. If no one thought religion was a good idea, we wouldn’t have religions. > [@](#): > > **So, not necessarily a good idea, but an aggressively persistent, self-replicating one.** A “good” idea, being purely subjective, merely means that the idea has passed muster for enough generations to become entrenched, not unlike a gene allele that reaches fixation in a population. Such ideas continue to persist simply because enough people are willing to accept them as “good”. Frankly, I cannot think of one example of a concept or idea or meme or whatever which could be seen as universally negative, yet which persists. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2003, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/32 "2003-10-20T18:11:20Z")
> [@](#): > > … > > I’m surprised that Dawkins didn’t express regret at what happened to his idea, since Dawkins always struck me as a materialist, and “memes” have definitely moved into the realms of spiritualism or some other form of “non-material reality”. This makes the third time I’ve excerpted Dawkins recently. Oh well. The notes in the Chapt. 11 text linked from above are from the 1989 edition, and note 2) is relevant here: > [@](#): > > The word meme seems to be turning out to be a good meme. It is now quite widely used and in 1988 it joined the official list of words being considered for future editions of Oxford English Dictionaries. This makes me the more anxious to repeat that my designs on human culture were modest almost to vanishing point. My true ambitions – and they are admittedly large – lead in another direction entirely. I want to claim almost limitless power for slightly inaccurate self-replicating entities, once they arise anywhere in the universe. This is because they tend to become the basis for Darwinian selection which, given enough generations, cumulatively builds systems of great complexity. I believe that, given the right conditions, replicators automatically band together to create systems, or machines, that carry them around and work to favour their continued replication. The first ten chapters of The Selfish Gene had concentrated exclusively on one kind of replicator, the gene. In discussing memes in the final chapter I was trying to make the case for replicators in general, and to show that genes were not the only members of that important class. Whether the milieu of human culture really does have what it takes to get a form of Darwinism going, I am not sure. But in any case that question is subsidiary to my concern. Chapter 11 will have succeeded of the reader closes the book with the feeling that DNA molecules are not the only entities that might form the basis for Darwinian evolution. My purpose was to cut the gene down to size, rather than to sculpt a grand theory of human culture. I wouldn’t buy that “meme” has moved into the realm of spiritualism. I would accept that it has become less-than-rigorously applied, although it’s not clear what degree of rigor Dawkins had in mind in the first place. I don’t think he was trying for a scientific concept that could be expounded upon in a peer-reviewed journal. He was writing in a book for a popular audience, and to put it rather less elegantly than his normal writing style, just spitballing. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2003, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/33 "2003-10-20T18:26:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Darwin’s Finch \* > \*\*Frankly, I cannot think of one example of a concept or idea or meme or whatever which could be seen as universally negative, yet which persists. \*\* You’re probably right and I think we’re just tripping up over the semantics of ‘good’. However, it is possible that some urban Legends qualify as effective memes that we wouldn’t perceive as ‘good’ - dire warnings about ‘spunkball’ or needles in cans of Coke - although, again, warning someone else about a danger is, I suppose a ‘good’ idea. My point though, is that not all memes spread by virtue of us perceiving them as a good and pleasant concept, or that there is any specific positive benefit from propagating them, but merely that _not_ spreading them _might_ be explicitly bad. It is, I suppose, a rather trifling distinction. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Great\_Unwashed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_great_unwashed/32/4791_2.png) [@The\_Great\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Great_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2003, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/34 "2003-10-20T21:42:36Z")
A very choice quote **yabob** – thanks. And **Mangetout** again is spot on (even as he feigns to back down) – one could define “goodness” _as_ “fitness to survive”, but that would be perverse – what we normally identify with “goodness” does not wholly intersect with “fitness to survive”. ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2003, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/35 "2003-10-20T22:21:27Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Dogface \* > \*\*If _Analog_ is the heir to _Astounding_ does that mean that it’s the current nest of Velikovskyism? > \*\* Heheh. [Yep](http://www.hycyber.com/SF/analog_ma.html), at least as of June, 1975 (see Michelson, Irving). I also distinctly recall several Analog science-fact articles which addressed global catastrophism from the 1980s. Interestingly enough, though I don’t really read it anymore, this month’s edition has an article on [dendrochronology](http://www.analogsf.com/0312/issue_12.shtml). Isn’t that one of the which finally put Velikovsky’s theories to bed? ---
**Author:** ![robertliguori](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/46a35a/32.png) [@robertliguori](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robertliguori)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/36 "2003-10-21T00:21:26Z")
Continuing the metaphor: Can we consider urban legends and the like mimetic viruses, which propogate through fear of the unknown, etc, and act much like biological viruses? I mean, a ‘good’ virus is one which survives. One route of survival is not to be hunted to extinction by your host, but it’s not the only one. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/37 "2003-10-21T08:05:34Z")
Another route of survival is massive scale reproduction (“send this to everyone in your address book”) and yet another is to mimic something else (“Microsoft will pay you a dollar for each person you forward this too”). ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/38 "2003-10-21T10:56:46Z")
Finch Isn’t white supremacy an example of a negative meme? Metaheuristically, it propogates by giving its holders a feeling of power, great self-esteem, and a compelling obsession to survive at all costs. As a unit of cultural evolution, it evolves by becoming more adaptive, and presents itself as more palatable by morphing into a benign separatism. True to the meme metaphysic, white supremacists cite separatist trends of other races as evidence of validity for their own views. ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/39 "2003-10-21T19:02:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Libertarian \* > \*\*Finch > > Isn’t white supremacy an example of a negative meme? > \*\* While it may be negative in a larger cultural sense, it would seem to be quite a “good” thing for those who adhere to such thought. That is, after all, why it persists: enough people think of it as beneficial that it perpetuates through teaching. As the individuals who adhere to the idea(s) of white supremacy find that fewer people are willing to spread it, the core ideas are changed, or, at least, they are presented differently to those on the “outside”, in an attempt to make them more palatable. Note that while it is often inappropriate to view organismal traits through a “good / bad” lens, I believe that it is not only appropriate, but necessary, to do so when examining cultural traits. By which, I mean that every individual makes value judgments about the ideas he or she encounters, whether it be whether a jingle has merit, a religion has merit, or whether their race should be deemed superior to another. If an idea persists, it can be truly said that those who accept it deem it to be “good” in terms of value or morals or however else you want to define good, not just in the sense that “good = successful”. As such, again, there can be no universally negative (that is, it is thought of as morally negative, valueless, or whatever else, by all those who come into contact with the idea) “meme” which can propagate. _Someone_ has to pick up and run with the idea for it to continue. ---
**Author:** ![Dogface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350/40 "2003-10-21T19:54:11Z")
I was asked for a cite for a personal conclusion. This is absurd. This is as absurd as a time I was in a philosophy course many years ago and one of the students screamed at me, demanding that I explain to him what gave me the RIGHT to question what he had to say. These days, the term “meme” is so "meaningful’ as to be meaningless. Everything is now “memetic”. Well, if everything is memetic, then memetic is so trivial as to not be worthy of mention. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-a-meme/208350.md?page=3)