Memes in Digital Culture (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)
The word “meme” was originally coined by Richard Dawkins in his classic 1976 book The Selfish Gene. In it, Dawkins defined memes as “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.” Dawkins’ examples were “tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.” Today, the list includes gifs, emojis, acron... See more
Nathan Baschez • How Memes Control Everything
strong tendency to liken memes to both viruses and genes.
Limor Shifman • Memes in Digital Culture (MIT Press Essential Knowledge)
There was, however, an alternative theory. The internet was not primarily a channel for the transmission of information in the form of evidence. It was better described as a channel for the transmission of culture in the form of memes. Users didn’t field a lot of facts and then assemble them into a world view; they fielded a world view and used it ... See more
Gideon Lewis-Kraus • Why Good Ideas Die Quietly and Bad Ideas Go Viral
To oversimplify, here’s where we ended up. The Internet really did bring new voices into a national discourse that, for too long, had been controlled by far too narrow a group. But it did not return our democratic culture and modes of thinking to pre-TV logocentrism. The brief renaissance of long blog arguments was short-lived (and, honestly, it wa... See more
Chris Hayes • On the Internet, We’re Always Famous
In the digital age, however, people do not have to repackage memes: they can spread content as is by forwarding, linking, or copying. Yet a quick look at any Web 2.0 environment reveals that people do choose to create their own versions of Internet memes, and in startling volumes.