Comment on Remember the past
Krono@lemmy.today 3 weeks agoIf we use the original definition of the word “meme”, which is “a unit of cultural transmission” then yes literally everything is a meme.
It was coined to be analogous to the word “gene”. One of the similarities is that the borders of genes and memes are fuzzy: when you split a gene in half, you get two genes. Both genes and memes are nested inside of themselves like a Russian doll.
The misdefinition of “meme” as “image macro on the internet” was ill informed, and is thankfully going out of style.
nednobbins@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
The term was originally coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 in, “the Selfish Gene”.
The main problem with that definition of the word is that it’s really hard to use. It requires both the speaker and the listener to be comfortable with the fungibility of data and code.