By Jenna Scarbrough
Certain fads , catchphrase , dancing , and songs pelt our society — nowadays , almost all of these are either born on or popularise through the cyberspace . Grumpy Cat , Rickrolling , Left Shark , Barbenheimer , This Is ok — all of these omnipresent cultural sensations have this in common . Some of them stick for a while , some do n’t . Those that linger are brand asmemes . But what exactly is ameme ?
In 1976 , English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins proposed an idea in his book , The Selfish Gene : What if ideas were like organism , where they could breed and mutate ? These ideas , he claimed , are actually the cornerstone for human acculturation , and they are born in the nous .
Dawkins ’s research is primarily in genetic science . He has argue thatall life swear on replication . But unlike prison cell , ideas do not swear on a chemic basis for natural selection . They get down from a single localization — the mentality — and spread outward , bound from one vessel to another , combat for attention . Some ideas are more successful , which may be due to an element of truth they transport , while others slowly die out . Some may not be accurate , but society has accepted these idea for so long that they are just accepted ( think about moving-picture show of Jesus or George Washington ; while these may not be what they in reality looked like , almost all graphics now portrays these men in the same elbow room ) .
Dawkins ask a name for this conception . He proposed call in itmimeme , from the Greek password signify “ that which is copy . ”He wrote in his book , “ I trust my classical scholar friends will forgive me if I abbreviatemimemetomeme . ” He feel the monosyllabic Holy Scripture would be more meet because it sounds similar togene . “ If it is any solace , ” he proceed , “ it could alternatively be thought of as being come to to ‘ memory , ’ or to the French wordmême . It should be articulate to rhyme with ‘ pick . ’ ”
Although Dawkins probably could n’t imagine the possibility of net memes during his initial research in the ‘ 70s and ‘ 80s , he has now accepted the annexation . Because it ’s still viral , he said in a 2013interview withWIRED , this popularity increase goes mighty along with his possibility that ideas are standardised to living things .
A version of this floor ran in 2017 ; it has been update for 2023 .
