Re: Go Memes
Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2014 8:44 am
The idea of a meme was originally as a cultural or other learned trait that is seen as analogous to a gene. An example might be a given feature of a particular religion or, say, the idea that you should wash your hands after going to the bathroom. Successful memes propogate themselves in a presumably evolutionary manner, where traits granted by the memes make them more or less likely to be passed on to new people. In the handwashing example, it may successfully propogate because people think they get sick less frequently. The actual facts of the matter are less relevant unless they actively prevent transmission, as because people are getting sick or dying. Memes in this sense can be helpful or harmful, but only need to continue to transfer to new people and stick around in old carriers to maintain existence. Originally, this was meant as a relatively serious way to think about culture, ideas, and cultural progress or change. Memes could be seen as being in competition with one another for minds with the survival of the fittest culling the unsuccessful ones. A given meme can also be seen to evolve as it is imperfectly transmitted.
As an example, I remember reading one article about a woman who always made baked ham by cutting off the end of the ham before baking it. She finally grew curious about this step, and asked her mother, who said that's how she always made it to do it right, just like her own mother. So the woman asked her grandmother about the practice, and got a straight answer, that she cut the end off to fit the ham in her small oven. The meme of cutting the end off survived even as it lost its original purpose. You can also see the evolution of them with the "10 bajillion words for snow in Eskimo" thing which doesn't even make sense, since Inuit languages don't have the same concept of words that we do, and has a history of increasing in size with every repetition. Early examples claimed maybe 25, and then nearly 50. Another example is the meaning of "meme", as seen below.
This phrase and idea spread through the armchair experts of the internet in the 90s, and came to specify to some degree any idea, fad or subcultural bit that comes to prominence (perhaps for no clear reason), like the "All your base are belong to us" phrase around 2000 or 2001, which is the first one I remember clearly. People would put this phrase on images they found humorously appropriate, and extend them in similar but novel ways. Lolcats are another example of this: an image of a cat, possibly odd in some way, with a hopefully humorous catchphrase or caption on it.
Through this, the word "meme" spread and specified to refer more specifically to the cutesy phrase on an image that's designed to make people want to share it, and now we have the examples in this thread.
As an example, I remember reading one article about a woman who always made baked ham by cutting off the end of the ham before baking it. She finally grew curious about this step, and asked her mother, who said that's how she always made it to do it right, just like her own mother. So the woman asked her grandmother about the practice, and got a straight answer, that she cut the end off to fit the ham in her small oven. The meme of cutting the end off survived even as it lost its original purpose. You can also see the evolution of them with the "10 bajillion words for snow in Eskimo" thing which doesn't even make sense, since Inuit languages don't have the same concept of words that we do, and has a history of increasing in size with every repetition. Early examples claimed maybe 25, and then nearly 50. Another example is the meaning of "meme", as seen below.
This phrase and idea spread through the armchair experts of the internet in the 90s, and came to specify to some degree any idea, fad or subcultural bit that comes to prominence (perhaps for no clear reason), like the "All your base are belong to us" phrase around 2000 or 2001, which is the first one I remember clearly. People would put this phrase on images they found humorously appropriate, and extend them in similar but novel ways. Lolcats are another example of this: an image of a cat, possibly odd in some way, with a hopefully humorous catchphrase or caption on it.
Through this, the word "meme" spread and specified to refer more specifically to the cutesy phrase on an image that's designed to make people want to share it, and now we have the examples in this thread.
