What is a meme?

[matgb]

Dawkins, who coined the word, said:

Examples of memes are tunes, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.

It doesn't have to be an online quiz, it doesn't need to be a set of questions, it's an idea, a saying, that is passed on, person to person, until everyone has heard it or read it. I have a new one. Well, sort of:

"I would so love to be quoted, one day, by someone."
-kasku

Via missedith01. Pass it on ;-)

Comments

[rho]

It simultaneously amuses me and frustrates that the use of the word "meme" to refer to Internet quizzes, surveys, etc. is such a prevalent and successful meme (original meaning).

[matgb]

Occasionally I think of going back and retagging all my quizzes as 'quiz' or something, leaving meme as a tag for just actual memes, but then I get bored and stop.

It might happen at some point. Probably when I switch to Wordpress as my main platform.

[js84.livejournal.com]

If you were bored enough to rename all the tags to quiz, you'd be bored enough to take part in one. Is only true meme worthy of the tag the google bomb?

At least the 'm' word doesn't dwarf all other tags like it has done on my LJ (http://comedyjim.livejournal.com/tag/).

[matgb]

Is only true meme worthy of the tag the google bomb?

Um, was there a word missing there? I don't get it.

But yeah, yours is a little big. That's why I use things like the life tag; if I mention something I've done, I tag it life. If I link elsewhere, I call it webstuff. Ergo, I have two huge tags.

At some point, I want to redo my tag cloud so it looks like yours, the multi usage ones and the single usage ones, make it more clear, but until I do, I'm stuck with the mess. Ah well. I like this layout overall, just a few gripes about some details.

[js84.livejournal.com]

Yes, I noticed it just as the buttons became ghosted and I couldn't go back. It should read 'Is the only true meme on your LJ worthy of such a tag the Google Bomb?'

[matgb]

Right. No, I don't think so.

For a start, those "do this and tag X people to do the same" things are proper memes; they spread ideas. This one is a meme, and it's spreading, at least one other person has reposted the quote (hint).

Then there are the fuel of all blogs, the reposting of links to cool stuff. I see a cool site and pass it on, others agree, and also link to it, and it spreads. The ultimate in memetics. But then, that's what quizzes are, really, they are a form of meme, even if they're not really a good one.

[fearmeforiampink]

The difference between something that's merely a quiz, and something that's a quiz-meme is the pass along factor.

Yes, the idea of completing a quiz, showing it to your friends and inviting them to try it is itself a meme, but any quiz that gets passed around people is then also a meme.

I suppose they are an outgrowth of the old multiple choice things in magazines that either give you a points score or have "mostly a's" style breakdown at the end - people would do them, possibly share the result and the magazine with any nearby friend, perhaps natter about it with people they know read the same magazine (and that last one's pushing it).

It's yet another example of the internet changing the way we work - it's both made the tallying and the sharing of the quizzes easier, thus now they can become memes.

[shakalooloo.livejournal.com]

To be quoted, one must say something worthy. Desire alone is insufficient.

[shakalooloo.livejournal.com]

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that desire is unwanted. If you're just saying something 'profound' in the hope of being quoted, then that defeats the whole point.

Ego has no place in such matters.

[matgb]

Ah, yes, but in this case, she desires to be quoted, but not for this. Now, the only quotation to her name is the desire to be quoted.

The whole point stating something like that is the wish to come up with something witty enough to be quoted. Those of us that have been quoted do not have this desire.

So by quoting her desire, we make it worse. Or something like that, anyway.