The Origin of Memes

The word "meme" comes from the 1976 book The Selfish Gene, written by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who turned out to be a transphobic asshole. Dawkins coined the term to describe an idea, behavior, or cultural practice that spreads within a society, similar to how genes replicate and evolve.

The word itself is derived from the Greek word "mimema" (μίμημα), meaning "that which is imitated." Dawkins shortened it to "meme" to make it more memorable, and to draw a parallel with "gene."

Cultural Units and Cultural DNA

Dawkins'idea of the meme focused on cultural evolution, and how ideas propagate, compete, and adapt within societies over time. Things like catchy tunes, fashion trends, or even religious practices. In the digital age, the term has come to refer primarily to viral internet content such as humorous images, videos, or phrases that spread rapidly on social media platforms.

Memes are cultural building blocks, working like small, replicable packets of cultural information. Like genes in biological evolution, memes transmit ideas, behaviors, and practices from one person to another.

Memes are often designed to be shared and replicated, spreading cultural elements efficiently through imitation, teaching, or storytelling. As memes spread, they often undergo changes or adaptations, ensuring relevance in different social contexts. Some memes however are created by accident and take a life of their own despite all the efforts to the contrary.

Only the most relatable or appealing memes tend to propagate widely, mirroring natural selection. Memes influence collective values, norms, and practices, shaping public opinion and popular culture.

Memes function as cultural "genes," encoding beliefs, practices, or trends. They propagate through minds and communities, shaping societal values and behaviors, illustrating the enduring impact of ideas on cultural evolution.

Examples of Memes in Cultural Evolution

• Proverbs: Sayings like “Actions speak louder than words.”
• Terms: Words or phrases conveying nuanced concepts.
• Rituals and Traditions: Practices like birthday celebrations or handshakes.
• Symbols: Icons like the heart symbol for love.
• Internet Memes: Viral images or videos with cultural significance.

Memes as Ideas

Memes are abstract and universal, representing cultural ideas, behaviors, or symbols. For example, the idea of "paying it forward" transcends formats, whether shared in stories, movies, or social media posts. Memes adapt across contexts while retaining their core essence.

The medium, whether it’s a tweet, graffiti, or a TikTok, is merely the vehicle for the meme. The idea remains the true cultural artifact, enduring and evolving beyond specific platforms.

Memes distill complex ideas into simple, relatable forms. For example, "Keep calm and carry on" encapsulates resilience and stoicism. Internet memes often use humor or symbolism to address intricate social commentary or critique.

However, memes can also oversimplify, losing nuance or perpetuating bias. While they democratize access to ideas, they must be used thoughtfully to ensure their messages remain meaningful and accurate.

How Memes Simplify Complexity

Memes condense layers of meaning into a single image, phrase, or gesture. For example, a simple phrase like "Keep calm and carry on" encapsulates a broader cultural essence of resilience and stoicism.

Internet memes often use humor, irony, or symbolism to pack complex social commentary or cultural critique into a single frame.

Memes use shared cultural references to create instant recognition and understanding. For instance, the galaxy brain meme uses visual escalation to make fun or highlight overthinking, absurd logic, or as a sarcastic response to something mundane or obvious.

Memes are intuitive and emotional. They appeal to people's feelings and shared experiences, which makes complex ideas feel more accessible and relatable. For example, a meme about climate change can resonate emotionally and inspire in ways that a scientific report or lecture might not.

Like traditional symbols or allegories, memes can use metaphors to speak of broader truths. For example, the Pepe the Frog meme has evolved into a symbol with various meanings depending on its context, from humorous to political. It has been used as a symbol of the alt-right movement. The Anti-Defamation League included Pepe in its hate symbol database in 2016, but said most instances of Pepe were not used in a hate-related context.

Conveying Complex Ideas

The "This Is Fine" dog sitting in a burning room communicates themes of denial and complacency in the face of chaos, concepts that might require paragraphs to explain otherwise.

The "Expanding Brain" meme can be used to humorously comment on levels of insight or absurdity in philosophical or sociological discussions.

Political memes often distill intricate policy debates into slogans or images that evoke strong emotions. For example, the "woke" meme reflects broader cultural dynamics around activism, social change, and ideological conflict. Its evolution mirrors society's shifting attitudes toward awareness, inclusivity, and the ways these ideas are embraced, challenged, or exploited. As a meme, it serves as both a lens for critiquing culture and a vehicle for shaping it.

Protest movements have adopted memes to simplify and amplify their messages, like Black Lives Matter as both a meme and a slogan for racial justice.

Scientific ideas, like evolution or relativity, can be communicated through memes that use humor or visual storytelling to simplify complex theories. The Distracted Boyfriend and the woman yelling at cat meme have been reinterpreted countless times to illustrate competing theories or phenomena.

The Danger of Simplification

While memes are great at simplifying, they can also oversimplify, losing nuance or context. This duality means memes must be used thoughtfully. On one hand, they democratize access to ideas, making complex topics more approachable. On the other, they can perpetuate misunderstandings and bias, or reduce nuanced issues into overly simplistic and even harmful narratives.

Memes function as cognitive shortcuts, helping people grasp big ideas quickly. By using shared cultural knowledge and emotional resonance, memes enable rapid communication of otherwise difficult or abstract concepts. In this way, they are a natural evolution of human storytelling and symbolic thinking, adapting traditional methods of conveying meaning to the fast-paced, interconnected world of modern culture.

Through their ability to combine simplicity with depth, memes transform the way people share, process, and engage with ideas, ensuring that even the most complex concepts can resonate across diverse audiences.

Sources About Memes

• Know Your Meme

  A comprehensive database documenting the origins and spread of internet memes.

• Pepe the Frog - Anti-Defamation League

  Details the context and usage of Pepe the Frog as both a meme and a hate symbol.

Criticisms of Memes

Books

• Maurice Bloch - How We Think They Think: Anthropological Approaches to Cognition, Memory, and Literacy (1998)
  • Critique: Questions the oversimplification of cultural transmission by the meme concept and emphasizes the complexity of human cognition in cultural contexts.
  • Focus: Argues that culture cannot be reduced to discrete, replicable units.
• Tim Ingold - The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling, and Skill (2000)
  • Critique: Criticizes the meme concept as overly mechanistic and reductive.
  • Focus: Advocates for understanding cultural transmission as an embodied and skill-based process, rather than through abstract replicators.
• Kate Distin - Cultural Evolution (2011)
  • Critique: Examines the shortcomings of memetics in explaining complex cultural phenomena.
  • Focus: Proposes alternative frameworks for cultural evolution that consider more nuanced dynamics of human interaction.

Articles

• Gabriel Tarde's Theories (Referenced in works by sociologists like Bruno Latour)
  • Critique: Proposes a more dynamic and fluid understanding of imitation and innovation, contrasting with memes as static units.
  • Key Argument: Cultural elements are constantly modified through interaction rather than replicating unchanged.
• Susan Blackmore’s Response to Critics (Journal of Memetics)
  • Context: While Blackmore defends memetics, her debates with critics highlight disagreements about the concept’s validity in explaining culture.
• Marcel Mauss - Techniques of the Body (1934)
  • Critique: Indirectly critiques the meme concept by emphasizing the embodied and social nature of cultural transmission.
  • Focus: Challenges the abstraction of cultural units as proposed by memetics.

Criticisms from Cognitive Science

• Steven Pinker
  • Critique: Argues that memes are unnecessary because cognitive science can explain cultural transmission through existing psychological frameworks.
  • Source: Pinker’s writings, including How the Mind Works (1997).
• Dan Sperber - Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach (1996)
  • Critique: Questions the analogy between memes and genes, arguing that cultural transmission is shaped by cognitive predispositions.
  • Alternative: Proposes an epidemiological model of culture focusing on mental representations.

Sociology and Anthropology Critiques

• Criticism of Reductionism: Sociologists argue that memes oversimplify the complexity of human culture and fail to consider the role of social structures, power dynamics, and historical context in cultural transmission.
• Ethnographic Studies: Anthropologists often find that cultural practices cannot be neatly broken down into discrete units like memes. Culture is seen as a holistic and integrative process.
• John McWhorter Talks About His New Book, 'Woke Racism':In his book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, Professor John McWhorter argues that a neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities in the USA. According to McWhorter, this well-meaning yet pernicious form of antiracism has become, not a progressive ideology, but a religion.

Alternative Theories

• Dual Inheritance Theory (Boyd and Richerson)
  • Suggests that human behavior is influenced by both genetic and cultural inheritance, without relying on the meme analogy.
• Epidemiology of Representations (Dan Sperber)
  • Focuses on how ideas spread through populations based on shared cognitive structures, without invoking the concept of memes.