"The Cake is a Lie". "Welcome to the herd". "One does not simply walk into Mordor". Wander about the internet long enough and you'll find a plethora of recurring phrases, images, and jokes that seem to pop up everywhere. How do these things spread so quickly? Why are they so attractive to people? And what are they, anyway? Well the answer to the last one is simple: they're memes.
A meme is "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture." The term was coined by ethologist and author Richard Dawkins, who proposed that information can travel in society in a manner similar to that of genetics in biology, and survive in a manner similar to survival of the fittest. The scope of such a concept is much larger than just the internet, however. Let's say that I were to tell a few of my friends a really funny joke. They would like it and tell it to their friends, who would tell it to their friends, and so on and so forth. The joke would "reproduce" when somebody told it to another person, and "evolve" if a person were to think of a way to make the joke funnier, or thought of an equally funny version with a different punchline. The joke would compete with other jokes at parties and offices, with weaker jokes being used less or "going extinct" in favor of the new, stronger joke. It is entirely possible that a year after telling my friends that joke, somebody introducing themselves to me it tell it to me without even knowing where it originated from. This is the general concept of a meme.
The idea of memes have been attributed to any "trend" of sorts in culture, ranging from political ideas to the creation of fairy tales to the foundations for religions themselves. In pre-modern eras, the information generated and shared with people would take years to get from point A to point B, and in that time most of the memes would stay relatively the same because their was not enough input from the populace for major alterations to occur. Changes might be made based on where the story is told, but the core remains familiar. For example, Cinderella is commonly attributed to France, and spreading to Italy and Germany. Each of the stories have slightly different details, but are clearly the same. However the tale itself can be traced back further, with similar stories found in Vietnam, The Middle East, Japan, and even Ancient Greece! The story and its themes stayed relatively the same throughout it's travels in different cultures.
If the history of Cinderella is a testament to how a meme can remain unchanged for a long time, then the modern internet is a testament to their ability to transform and spawn other memes, and at a rapid pace; these are the memes more familiar to the public.
The first and most recognizable memes were more like concepts than actual pieces of information. Many people are familiar with LOLcats; image macros of cats with humorous and often misspelled captions. These were able to spread fairly simply because of their simplicity, and became truly popular thanks to the sheer volume of them posted. Many of the earliest memes were also image macros which spawned from 4chan, an imageboard of dubious reputation that even today still manages to create several memes. Another large source of memes, and the one more widely used today, is tumblr. This is mainly thanks to the fact that most people who use tumblr are part of communities that have a large number of memes associated with them, such as My Little Pony, Homestuck, Harry Potter, and Mean Girls. It also helps that Tumblr's system is mostly based on exchanging and passing on information in the form of reblogging. It's very easy for a single image to be seen by an entire fan base or two in a single day, or even a single hour. The best memes are the ones that can become "snow clones"; memes which can be easily altered to fit into different situations. For example, these images are very often replicated into a basic "X ALL of the Y!" format, with the original person occasionally being altered to fit the topic. This occurrence is the best allegory for a "mutation" of the meme.
Something becoming a meme can be very beneficial to the original source of the mutation. Some of the most notable successes would be stars of certain viral videos, such as Rebecca Black of "Friday" fame and Antoine Dodson, who's amusing interview concerning the attempted rape of his sister was auto tuned by the Gregory Brothers into the "Bed Intruder Song". it is interesting to note that the term "viral" is another term originating from a biological context and used to describe internet phenomena, and also fitting as these videos witnessed huge spikes in popularity shortly after their release.
Like a virus, their popularity rapidly increased and took over the internet in that period of time. The fame and money they garnered from the videos and ensuing song sales, whether deserved or not, have been very large. It should be noted that after that, they become less popular searches. Their meme status was not strong enough compared to other memes on the net, and they now face and extinction of sorts. Another interesting example can be found in regards to the "Three Wolf Moon" T-shirt. There is not anything especially interesting about the shirt itself, silly having a trio of wolves howling at a full moon. However the clothing article gained fame after a humorous review of it was submitted. Eventually the review became memetic, and by extent the shirt. This translated into a %2300 increase in sales, as reported by the manufacturing company.
What the constant creation, mutation, and extinction of memes, it is clear that information passes at a phenomenal rate on the internet. It also shows just how young the internet is. If the entirety of the online community were to donate just a bit more time to things such as spreading news or awareness for a good cause, those things too would became known to more and more people. It demonstrates the power that the internet can have if it were to focus all of it's resources on a common goal.
Sources
Meme. Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Dawkins, Richard (1989), The Selfish Gene (2 ed.), Oxford University Press, p. 192, ISBN 0-19-286092-5
Herodotus. The Histories. Retrieved 25 March 2010., book 2, chapters 134 and 135.
Aelian, "Various History", 13.33
Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen, Hassan Wassouf (2004). The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 4.
TvTropes: Memetic Mutation
Know Your Meme: Three Wolf Moon
Chicago Tribune –Three Wolf Moon
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