Age Like Milk

Don't Age Well

Go Over Your Head

Go Viral

meme

ology (the study of)

millennial

meme lord

Boomer

Klingon

stealing memes

folklore

rhetoric

mental health

Netflix

Instagram

Reddit

is an inside joke with millions of strangers

I think part of the reason we love memes so much is because it's like having an inside joke with millions of strangers

is an inside joke for people who don't have friends

Memes are like inside jokes for people who don't have friends

is just an inside joke with a billion people that have never met.

A meme is just an inside joke with a billion people that have never met.

is, in conservative circles, generally some version of, "I find humor in the pain of people whom i don't like".

is a 'mind virus' and an epidemiology of ideas, such as a snatch of a song, fashion, an idea which is passed between humans.

Of course, although genes are only transmitted vertically down generations, from parent to offspring, memes can be passed horizontally as well, from peer to peer, or teacher to pupil. Memes can take many forms: snatches of songs (the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth, for example), fashions (wearing caps backwards), ideas (those of science, or religion, or myth) and so on. Some are better at getting passed on than other, perhaps by virtue of being more memorable or emotionally salient. . . . Just as bits of DNA or RNA (wrapped up in a protein coat) that jump from person to person in the way memes do are known as viruses, so Dawkins suggests that virulent memes should be thought of as 'mind viruses'. Memetics has developed into a serious approach to understanding cultural evolution, but also has many critics. But whatever the status of memetics as a science, it is clear that ideas from a number of sources are passed on to children in a way that looks epidemiologically looks like viral transmission.

meme, n.All

Meme

meme