What’s in a Meme?

What's in a Meme?

Before I get into the post, I must apologize as I haven’t posted here in over a month. I’ve been preoccupied with real life a bit so wasn’t able to get to writing a post here. However, now that it’s my spring break and I have life a bit more back in order, hopefully you’ll be seeing more of my face here!

I’ve recently started a weekly meme on my own blog where I blog a different idea every Monday. I originally started this because fellow blogger Tymmerie Thorne mentioned something about blog memes on plurk and that got me thinking and gave me this idea. However, every week that I’ve posted one so far, I’ve had at least one or two people approach me and ask me what exactly is a meme and why am I doing them on my blog.

An internet meme (rhymes with team) is basically a virally-transmitted cultural symbol or social idea. Majority of internet memes can be found on tumblr and are usually mildly amusing however teetering on the verge of annoyance, such as your rick-rolling and your gangnam style dancing. A blog meme is similar in nature but more like a blog challenge, to help fight writer’s blogger’s block. Basically they are like templates that bloggers can use to fill out and participate in something thus increasing their blog content and contributing to the blogging community.

I must admit, I’ve really been enjoying reading the memes and getting to know my readers more. I have added a whole bunch of new bloggers to my reader and even made a few new friends I’ve chatted with inworld (which is rare for me).

I’ve done three blog memes so far and they can all be found in my memes category on my blog.

Hopefully I’ll be able to do another couple of posts here this week before my spring break ends. Hope you’re all having lovely spring weather! I hear it’s still snowing in some places. 😛

In the photo: Strawberry Singh
Location: Second Life

Strawberry Singh is a resident of the virtual world Second Life™ She is an avid blogger, photographer and social media enthusiast.

6 thoughts on “What’s in a Meme?

  1. The word meme originates with Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, in order to make language to explain the propagation, spread, and death of ideas. The idea was that a meme is the smallest unit of knowledge, and depending on how people react to various memes they react like biological species do, changing, spreading from one place to another, expanding and becoming extinct.

    It’s been thoroughly corrupted by the internet now, but I always find it kind of funny it originated in academia.

      1. Before going on about memes… another beautiful photo Berry! Thank you, as always, for sharing!! 🙂

        Yes to Deoridhe, the term Meme originates in Dawkins seminal book The Selfish Gene.

        My understanding of Meme is that it’s the knowledge equivalent to a biological Gene. Genes are biology that use human hosts to reproduce themselves, and Memes are Ideas or Knowledge that use human hosts to reproduce themselves. Here’s an old one: some years ago a lot of peeps started wearing really baggy pants slung low on the hips with low crotches. Everybody knew that this was COOL… but not everyone knew that this MEME originated with all the gang members in prison, where they take away your belt so you can’t hang yourself with it. So the baggy pants meme started in gangs as a symbol of solidarity with members in prison… and then as with so many fashion memes that start in the street, it ran across culture, sometimes detached from it’s original symbolic meaning.

        The funny thing about Internet Memes is… they feel “corrupted”… but they’re really not. I suppose they’re meta in the sense that the baggy pants meme evolved “naturally” whereas the troll face meme is “manufactured” in the hopes of “going viral”…

        But really, “going viral” essentially means “becoming a meme” or becoming a widespread meme.

        It feels like the Internet Meme peeps don’t really appreciate “MEME” in the full richness of the Dawkins context, but to a fair degree, they, whether they realize it or not, actually do! 🙂

        When you make internet memes, you are participating in Language / Ideas / Knowledge / Culture… and you are hoping they will “go viral”… or become long lived memes. A gene mutation that instantly dies out is still a gene, but we probably care more about the genes that persist over longer periods of time, and so with memes.

        Thanks Berry!
        Thanks Deoridhe!

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