Meme
From RationalWiki
A meme is the smallest meaningful unit of information within the context of a given culture. The term was was coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene in the mid 1970s. The term is derived from the word gene, which is a unit of hereditary information. Dawkins proposed the idea that social information could change and propagate through a culture in a way similar to genetic changes in a population of organisms.
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[edit] Memeplexes
The idea was subsequently developed to include political philosophies and religions, which were named memeplexes, because they contain vast numbers of interacting memes. Religious mythology is part of the memeplex of religion. In the same way that Dawkin's "selfish genes" would propagate through populations for their own benefit and not for the benefit of the organisms that carry them, memeplexes propagate through society irrespective of their value to the society. Enduring negative memeplexes are sometimes called "mind viruses". Christian fundamentalism is one such example.
Like genes, memes may be useful, negative or neutral. For example, political philosophies - or indeed any philosophy including the philosophies of science - are also memes or memeplexes.
[edit] Internet memes
The internet has been a source for the creation and propagation of many new memes. On the internet an idea can be developed and quickly acquire modifications from users around the world, such that the root idea becomes the basis for multiple spin-off ideas, subsets of ideas, and other similar iterations. In this sense, a "meme" evolves, taking on a life of its own through the contributions of users of varied cultural backgrounds.
Many memes are humorous in nature. "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" was an early internet meme, and "lolcats" is a popular emergent meme. Other memes focus on potential dangers, such as cell phones causing fires at gas pumps. When Internet vandals copy each other this also generates memes.
