When we say “meme”, what are we talking about?

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You’ve probably seen a “meme” —

They are either freshly baked or coated with layers of electronic pulp, they are without exception short and shrewd, and they can always poke a smile or a tear you never imagined. Compared with dry complaints, meme seems to have some kind of magic, it can draw an arc from the dense information flow, bypass the complicated and lengthy text communication and directly hit your emotions.

Sometimes they monitor depressing moments in your life that you don’t reveal:

Sometimes they’re a great tool for fans of the MBTI personality test, and nothing more vividly depicts a variety of personality types than a meme:

Sometimes they penetrate deep into philosophical circles, recounting serious and obscure issues in witty form:

And sometimes break your predictions with wild imagination:

The reason why memes are ubiquitous is largely due to their quick and easy way of making, you don’t even need to open a computer – just select a template on your phone, fill in the text, and a new meme is created.

Wait – but does this have to be a meme?

What if you stopped laughing and scolding with memes, but used the mouths of classic characters to express your philosophical views?

What if you didn’t “make memes”, but used dozens of meme pictures to tell a specific life experience and mental journey?

In the Douban MEMERS group, such posts are removed from the name of meme and classified as a “life sharing area”, but at other times, they are often given a slightly derogatory alias – “PPT”.

In other words, this kind of long talk is not a meme because there is no “stalk”.

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So, what exactly is a meme?

If you look up the answer to the question on a domestic search engine, you will find that many people use “Gengtu” as the Chinese equivalent of meme, while others who are not so satisfied with this translation will use the transliteration method to call it “” Meme”, “meme” or “mystery meter”, but no one has given a clear definition.

A picture, a sentence, a melody, or a dance can all be referred to by “meme”. They seem to have something in common, but when it comes to the mouth, it can’t be formed – does it have to have visual properties? Does it have to be humorous? Does it have to convey a meaning that can be understood…

The dilemma of defining “meme” is obvious, and this dilemma stems in large part from its distinctiveness from its inception— it itself derives from a metaphor for definition and communication .

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“Invention” of Meme

The history of the word Meme is not very long. In 1976, the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coined the term in his book: In the original context, meme was approximately equal to the human “meme” .

Dawkins reinterprets the relationship between humans and genes in a subversive perspective, that is: genes, not people, dominate.

Under normal circumstances, we will “group” as the smallest unit of biological evolution. Birds have excellent dynamic vision in order to adapt to predation; antelopes have evolved endurance ten times better than cheetahs in order to escape from pursuit; and the evolutionary advantages of humans are condensed into dexterous hands and a 1400ml brain.

In Dawkins’s interpretation, the basic unit of evolution becomes the more microscopic “selfish gene”. “Selfishness” does not involve any value judgment, but merely refers to the inherent tendency of genes to “reproduce self and preserve self”.

“Organism” is no longer just an individual, but a chemical factory of genes – only those “factories” that can reproduce more and more stable new genes can survive in the cruel competition; therefore, our consciousness, thinking , language system, morality, religion, and state are only specific means by which genes continue to perpetuate themselves. Genes give us the command to “reproduce,” and we just use our brains to execute that command—that’s all.

What about memes? In Dawkins’ view, meme is the gene of human culture.

According to Dawkins, “meme” is directly derived from the Greek root mīmēma (μίμημα), which means “to be imitated”. In addition, it is associated with memory (memory) in English and Même (same) in French, and can be pronounced similar to -gene (gene).

Combining the above factors, it is the image that meme was originally given: a cultural factor that replicates itself like a gene and pursues perpetuity.

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Meme as a dissemination structure of ideas

In front of meme, your brain and my brain become the host and guest, and become a resource for meme to compete with each other.

Meme researcher Susan Blackmore once used the “weed and garden” analogy to compare the relationship between memes and our minds.

When we close our eyes and let go of our thoughts, we will find that it is actually quite difficult to “think about nothing”.

Even if no one grooms the gardens in our minds, plants will grow and spread. Most of the trivial thoughts will quickly rot in the soil after germination, and those stories, knowledge, pictures, and melodies that impress you will stay here for a long time, and even accompany you throughout your life.

In most cases, we don’t actively choose what to remember and disseminate.

A horrific scene in Cult might make you physically uncomfortable, but the footage doesn’t leave you just because you want to erase it. Don’t forget that lambs to be slaughtered are not memes, but our brains. A meme that’s interesting enough can always hold a place in people’s memory, and then trick people into mobilizing brain cells to help them evolve into new, more transmissible forms.

When a meme appears in scene A, it takes root in our mind inadvertently, and then, when we see another similar scene B, it will reappear with a similar but different appearance, with the help of your brain to complete One self-replication and mutation.

And when you introduce this meme to your friend in combination with scene B in front of you, the meme jumps from your brain to his/her brain. Such dissemination and evolution will happen countless times until our brains are occupied by a plethora of other information, and there is no longer enough nutrients to support this “new stalk”.

As can be seen from the above examples, unlike biological transmission, which mainly relies on “heredity”, the way of transmission of meme is “imitation”. Just as “one cannot step into the same river twice”, the idea of ​​being a meme cannot appear in the exact same scene twice. Each occurrence of a meme is an imitation of the previous one, taking on new meanings due to different neighbors.

Judging from the context in which meme was coined as a term, meme is not so much a basic unit that exists in the form of words or images as it is the dissemination structure of ideas themselves, which evolves themselves in order to strive for in as many brains as possible. reproduce and survive. This structure has existed since the birth of culture, and it is hidden in all areas within the reach of thinking.

To put it in the middle: everything in the brain is a meme.

Perhaps in the long process of dissemination and evolution, a certain meme has been integrated with people. For example, “the right family, more children and more happiness” was the only solution in life just a few decades ago, and even today we are understanding Intimacy is no longer subject to this, but escapes from the “two-two combination” open
Relationships are still far from socially acceptable. In this sense, “intimacy” as a meme retains the original main structure, and completes a cross-generational mutation and transmission.

And some memes may no longer be remembered, but their mutilated but massive limbs still feed many other ideas. For example, you don’t think of the word “atheism” very often, but your whole worldview is based on it. foundation, and it works day and night.

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When we say “meme”, what are we talking about?

The “Internet meme” often referred to as meme map mentioned at the beginning of the article is not unworthy of its name. Whether it is an Internet meme map or an endless stream of crazy Thursday copywriting, they directly display their own “evolution process” on the bright side. , like a miniature model of the propagation structure.

In daily dialogue, the expression of ideas will be presented in a complete closed-loop form, and the interlocutors will not delve into how each other integrates content and structure into a natural conversation. It is often only in formal conversations or written texts that we can easily identify structures such as “total-score-total” or “argument-argument”.

However, Internet memes are obviously broken. Each meme is in the form of “template + content”. Readers can easily distinguish which part is the author’s flash of inspiration and which part is the relatively fixed meme itself. Of course, the “template” here does not only refer to a template in the form of a picture, but also a specific text structure.

When readers familiar with meme man see the spelling error in the meme picture, they will realize that this is not an omission by the author, but that “obvious misspellings that do not destroy the original pronunciation” have become the meme template in text form. And other common meme text formats also have similar effects, such as “I be like at XXXX” or “others/me” and so on.

The overused structure of “first, second, last” is no longer recognizable. Like the aforementioned “atheism,” the idea of ​​an overly ordinary one has become the ultimate meme rooted in language, at another level it is dead and fed.

The replacement of such ultimate meme means a huge paradigm revolution. Even if this process is not conscious of the holder of the concept, it can often be condensed into a strong material force. In this sense, what Elon Musk said, “whoever controls meme, controls the entire universe” is not exaggerated.

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Write at the end:

While writing this short article, I’ve been awkwardly resisting my urge to define what a meme is, but in the end it’s hard to avoid this “bad consequence”.

After all, even if there is no “tangible entity” behind a word, our usage of it in a particular context is still relatively fixed. Therefore, if you have seen “meme” in group chats or social media, and have the question of “what netizens mean by meme”, then this may be an imprecise but plausible answer:

Borrowing a widely spread and easily recognizable structure to express it can be called a meme.

As for those “meme prototypes” that gradually deviated from the topic in the subsequent dissemination process, although they did not escape the meme-style concept dissemination structure, we usually do not call them meme. On the contrary, new ideas that have gradually come to life after subsequent transformation can easily be named meme.

When you see a funny picture that is hard to categorize, think about it, and finally call it “meme”, the once academic term, the word “meme” itself has become the quintessential meme in today’s context.

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