I truly love 'Gangnam Style.' I guess it's a meme. I feel like it's one of the few times where the meme and the quality combines nicely.
The only thing that can blow away the Michael Jordan sad face meme, is the Floyd Mayweather knockout meme. If Floyd Mayweather got knocked out - knocked out to the point where he is ice cold on the ground - I think that's the one meme that can just overwhelm the whole Jordan issue.
We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'.
In the original introduction to the word meme in the last chapter of 'The Selfish Gene,' I did actually use the metaphor of a 'virus.' So when anybody talks about something going viral on the Internet, that is exactly what a meme is, and it looks as though the word has been appropriated for a subset of that.
When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell.
As for memes, the word 'meme' is a cliche, which is to say it's already a meme. We all hear it all the time, and maybe we even have started to use it in ordinary speech. The man who invented it was Richard Dawkins, who was, not coincidentally, an evolutionary biologist. And he invented it as an analog for the gene.
Generally, the view that I've had on Twitter is if you're on Twitter, you're in, like, the meme - you're in meme war land. If you're on Twitter, you're in the arena. And so, essentially, if you attack me, it is therefore OK for me to attack back.
Time and again, my sociobiological colleagues have upbraided me as a turncoat, because I will not agree with them that the ultimate criterion for the success of a meme must be its contribution to Darwinian "fitness". At bottom, they insist, a "good meme" spreads because brains are receptive to it, and the receptiveness of brains is ultimately shaped by (genetic) natural selection.
Would you want people walking up to you and pointing at your d--k? I can't believe I'm still talking about this. But I've worn underwear every day of my life and the fact that I'm painted as this exhibitionist is a little annoying. It's become a meme, I guess. Being someone who people want to photograph, you have to open yourself up to the positive and negative. It is what it is. If I get mad at it I'll look like a douchebag. But it's silly.
A meme (rhymes with dream) is a unit of information (a catchphrase, a concept, a tune, a notion of fashion, philosophy or politics) that leaps from brain to brain. Memes compete with one another for replication, and are passed down through a population much the same way genes pass through a species. Potent memes can change minds, alter behavior, catalyze collective mindshifts and transform cultures. Which is why meme warfare has become the geopolitical battle of our information age. Whoever has the memes has the power.
I have a great sense of humor, I mean even when my meme came out I reposted it. I didn't care. I was laughing, too!
Bien que les étoiles ne parlent pas, même en étant silencieux, ils crient. Although the stars do not speak, even in being silent they cry out.
Memes just show that people are engaged about something. A meme is just a little inside joke for a group of people that care about a certain thing.
I like nice things, I love money really, don't I? But I don't love the fame side. All I care about is my world title, being in big fights and being known for that.
I do think the Roman Catholic religion is a disease of the mind which has a particular epidemiology similar to that of a virus... Religion is a terrific meme. That's right. But that doesn't make it true and I care about what's true. Smallpox virus is a terrific virus. It does its job magnificently well. That doesn't mean that it's a good thing. It doesn't mean that I don't want to see it stamped out.
I don't really care about being right, I just care about success. I don't mind being wrong, and I'll admit that I'm wrong a lot. It doesn't really matter to me too much. What matters to me is that we do the right thing.