Prior to
this article, when I thought of memes I pictured viral internet characters or
moments that had been modified to make the content more relatable or funny to
the audience. I classified it more so as an inside joke with adults of my
generation; which in a sense is pretty accurate, but only for a certain kind of
meme – An internet meme. The term meme in contemporary internet media and
culture is a concept that spreads from person to person via the internet. But
more specifically, it is a documentation of pop culture that has undertones
that are humorous, pathetic, quirky, or provocative. Richard Dawkins takes the
definition of the term meme to a different level – connecting in more ways than
one to basic biology. In short, Dawkins defines the term as an idea, music, or
catch-phrase that catches on and propagates itself by spreading from brain to
brain. He also connects memetics (memes)
with genetics. He explains that like a gene, a meme replicates and is
accessible to the universe either by principles of biology or principles of
modern social media. He goes in depth with describing how a meme is applicable
in various forms; ranging from biology to something more abstract (such as
religion/faith). I found this to be the most intriguing part of the article. I
had never thought of memes in any other way other than sociocultural terms, but
Dawkins definitely brought about some fascinating points; my favorite point
being the tie-in with survival and how memes can be longer lasting than genes. Memes
have the possibility of lasting forever if its survival is dependent on how
much it gets spread from one brain to another, versus genes –while they can be
inherited or passed along to newer generations—eventually they fade and only remnants
are left. I think that this goes hand-in-hand
with convergence media. Memes are the concept of sharing the information we
absorb and how we interpret it, while convergence media is more the concept of
spreading this interaction by use of technologies. In a broad sense the only problem I can see in
applying biological theories to culture is that culture is not biological, and
while some things are relatable not everything fits together. And usually things
of structure and abstraction have difficulty finding a middle ground (much like
trying to push a cube through a triangular-shaped hole). However, Dawkins developed a great
relationship between the two, which I find difficult to argue, by saying, “We are
built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines.”
Also, didn't really find any links that I found exceptionally interesting, but enjoy this Song on Memes (supposedly there's refrences to 40 memes but I defintely didn't find them all)
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