Meme facts for kids

Richard Dawkins coined the word meme in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.

A meme (pronounce as "meem") is a way of expressing your humored side .

One idea is that culture builds in a way similar to living things. An example would be how viruses spread to different organisms. Memes change as they go, creating controversy, and sculpting society. Just as a virus would, memes evolve from their state, being photoshopped, and exaggerated. Memes can be about anything.

Biologist and evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins invented the word meme in 1976. He said that tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothing fashions, ways of making pots, and the technology of building arches were all examples of memes.

Examples of memes

"Kilroy was here" was a graffito that became popular in the 1940s, and existed under various names in different countries, illustrating how a meme can be modified through replication.

• Technology: cars, paper-clips, etc. The progress of technology is a bit like genetics, because it has spread by 'mutations' or changes to progress. For example, many paper-clip designs have been made. Some last longer than others, and some look better than others. In the end the ones that are copied are a memetic success.
• Jokes spread and change the more they are told.
• Proverbs
• Gossip
• Nursery rhymes: passed on from parent to child over many generations (thus keeping old words such as "tuffet" and "chamber" popular when they are not used today).
• Epic poems: once important memes for preserving oral history; writing has largely superseded their oral transmission.
• Conspiracy theories
• Recipes
• Fashions
• Religions: complex memes, including folk religious beliefs, such as The Prayer of Jabez.
• Popular concepts: these include Freedom, Justice, Ownership, Open Source, Egoism, or Altruism
• Group-based biases: everything from anti-semitism and racism to cargo cults.
• Longstanding political memes such As "mob rule", national identity, Yes Minister and "republic, not a democracy".
• Internet phenomena: Internet slang. "Internet memes" propagate quickly among users using email, websites, blogs, discussion boards and other Internet communications as a medium.
• Metameme: The concept of memes itself is a meme.
• Anecdotes: Short jokes or other stories.
• Phrases; and common expressions.
• Chain-letters

Related pages

• Figure of speech
• Internet meme
• Propaganda
• Rhetoric
• Self-replication
• Semiotics

Images for kids

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  Imitating the famous cover of the Beatles album Abbey Road (1969), on which the band members cross the road in front of the Abbey Road Studios in a row, has become popular with fans and London visitors

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  The four actresses of the Japanese Manga/media franchise Milky Holmes reenact the Beatles cover in 2010, extending the original Beatles meme by their film costumes

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  In 2011, four cosplayers imitate the above meme during the Manga convention Paris Manga 2012 at a zebra crossing in Paris, thus further separating the meme from the root situation of 1969 tied to the Abbey Road zebra crossing

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  Typical format for image macros

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  A lolcat image macro, of a style popular in the mid-2000s

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  Advice animal meme

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  Example of the "deep-fried" style of meme, where colours are distorted and saturated and characters have glowing eyes

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  A comedic rendition of the Gadsden Flag, which pokes fun at the political position of those who use it, such as libertarians.

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  This image macro belongs to the public domain in the United States as the background is taken by the Department of Agriculture

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See also

In Spanish: Meme (cultura) para niños