this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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Memes
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I remember when random comics that don't get passed around much weren't considered to be memes.
I must be so old.
A couple of years ago my kid took a funny picture of the cat and put some white text on it and said "look I made a meme!" I told her "No, you made an image macro. it's not a meme unless it goes viral." and even her mother who's older than me told me I was being pedantic and any picture can be a meme.
I hate it here.
You don't get to dictate how others use language ʅ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)ʃ
but we all have the right to be bothered by it :)
Especially when the new meaning causes the old one to be forgotten despite it being a pretty cool idea.
Then why'd I have kids???
If you want to be pedantic, it'd be good to know that that's not what a meme is. A meme is a unit of cultural information—analogous to a gene being a unit of genetic information. A meme may not go viral, just like a gene might not be successfully copied onto other generations, but it's still a meme nonetheless :)
Yeah yeah I've read Dawkins :P My definition is based on earlier internet when things were what they were and became a meme as they were shared. Of course a popular image macro haz become meme but so can a questionnaire (wtf was wrong with us??)
it seems the meaning has changed, but to be honest I don't know what the new meaning is.
Comics are just serialized memes.
A meme is just "A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another."
Anything can be a meme. I mean, the entire first Shrek movie was a meme, just like the bee movie.
in the Dawkins sense, sure. But the "meme" in "internet meme" has a more specific meaning.