Even just as common words, zany, cute, and interesting seem intuitively right as keys to what many people want to look at, laugh with, sigh over, and share with others. If you want to make a meme, in the general sense of a unit of media that will be shared by others, those three all work.

• Memes are units of cultural imitation


• We absorb memes that seem to work and fit with our prior memes


• When we absorb a meme, it gets expressed in our behavior


• When we express a meme, other people see it and might copy it


• Memes evolve through mutation and natural selection just like genes do


• People resist memes that don’t fit into their existing network