Memes are the currency of modern culture. They are the smallest unit of shared cultural experiences. Understanding a meme puts the individual in an in-group and allows them to share a connection with anyone else who gets it. There is a dark side to memes as well. They can serve as a tool for exclusion and stifle deeper discussions. But where did the term come from and can we find out where memes themselves originate? Does the current understanding of the word mirror its original intent, or is the gulf as vast as cynicism now and cynicism in antiquity? Are these even the right questions? Let’s dive right in and find out how a word from a book on evolutionary biology became the lingua franca of the internet.

(An ancient ancestor of the Oh Really Owl meme, circa 20th or 21st Century AD)

These days Richard Dawkins is better known for his cutting critiques of religion. The word meme first made its appearance in Richard Dawkins’ seminal work, The Selfish Gene. Deriving from the Greek root mimeme, meaning imitation, he wanted a word that sounded like gene, hence meme (rhymes with ‘theme,’ and thankfully not me-me). The meme is the smallest unit of cultural transmission, an imitation. If not exclusive to us as a species, we certainly provide the lion’s share of memes in the world today. Dawkins, even at this early juncture, had a solid grasp on what makes for a good meme. The idea of the meme did not happen in a vacuum; it came about as a thought experiment near the end of an argument about how Darwinian evolution works.

During The Selfish Gene’s publication in 1976, the professor had a more modest target than religion. He aimed at biologists that fought for group selection. Scientists that followed group selections were still Darwinians; they believed that the group (the pack, the flock, etc.) had a role in selection pressures. The book’s goal was to disabuse them of that notion. For Dawkins, even the organism is too messy an object to understand natural selection correctly. He argues that if we are to understand and explain biological evolution, we must look at the gene alone. And the selfish gene can want things that seem opposed to the wants of the individual. Memes appear as a thought experiment to show the power of evolution by natural selection.

The gene is not a unique class on its own but is part of a broader category called replicators. A replicator has three attributes: fecundity, longevity, and copying fidelity. Mix time and selection pressure, throw in some trial and error, and replicators can produce wonders. There is no need for a supernatural watchmaker, and that is Darwin’s great insight. When a new replicator like the meme appears, it will carve a path different from its predecessor. Different replicators face different selection pressures. The speed and way different replicators produce are different, and they can even come into direct conflict with one another. A celibacy meme is not ideal for the selfish gene. 

The meme was born as a thought experiment to knock the selfish gene down a peg or two. Just as the gene may not be a discrete unit, the same is true of the meme. We talk about memes, genes or any replicator in shorthand. In The Extended Phenotype, published in 1982, Dawkins observes that what we see is the replicator’s effect on the world at large, and not just in traits we can see in the organism like hair color. And this extended phenotype plays an essential role in selection pressures, for memes especially.

Unlike the gene, which finds itself nestled in the chromosome, the location of a meme is less defined. If memes exist as a discrete structure like the chromosome in the brain, seeing them is at least theoretically possible. If they exist as a distributed structure, finding them is trickier. What we can more easily observe is the extended phenotype of the meme – the Pepe frogs, MAGA. If we are to be pedantic, “I can haz a cheeseburger” cat is the extended phenotype of the meme, not the meme itself. Hardly catchy.

If memes are units of cultural transmission, they come from the smallest chunks of a universal idea. They do not necessarily have to be funny videos or pictures – Dawkins argues that belief in God(s) is a meme and a pernicious one at that. We describe things as going viral, earworms, etc., the language generally reserved for parasites. That is a clue. The memes that are successful are simple, catchy, and sometimes even elegant.

(Hello Cthulhu, a combination of two older memes into its own meme. The first a dark, profane eldritch abomination, the second some funny squid thing some guy in New England thought of.)

We continue to use the word meme, though not in the same way Dawkins’ first used the word. Nowadays, memes commonly refer to funny pictures, witty tweets, cute animal videos, et cetera that explode in popularity on the internet. Meming is the act of reciting viral content like dabbing in odd locations. There are sites like www.knowyourmeme.com that track the history of when memes go viral. In some sense, that gives us the origin of the meme in the way we commonly use the word – when something goes viral. Even though we can consider the opening riff to Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song a meme, we do not immediately think of it as such.

The academic field of memetics dedicates itself to how memes might evolve, and what selection pressures they face. Its efforts appear to bring us closer to the origin of memes, but as of now, there is no Principia Mathematica to give us a grand system of memes. To the people studying memetics, all that needs to happen is a breakthrough to turn the field into a full-blown scientific endeavor.

The critics are skeptical, lumping memetics into pseudo-science, with ideas so vague they are not even wrong. And there may be some truth to that. Dawkins’ never had any intention for memes to become a grand theory of human culture. He simply wanted to demonstrate how powerful Darwin’s idea of evolution by natural selection truly is.

The historical origin of the term meme is straightforward. But there is no agreement on whether memes are actual units of cultural transmission or just a useful thought experiment. Does it even make sense to talk about how we create memes?

One solution is to return to that old dictum of science – all models are wrong, but some are useful. Memes may not exist in the same way that genes do but thinking about them can give us an intuition about how replicators can work outside of the context of biology. We can make testable predictions about how replicators in general work. That may end up being useful if we ever discover non-DNA based replicators in the future. And if using memes as a broad way to understand human culture provides some fascinating insight, maybe that is good enough.

If nothing else, as Dawkins argues, memes allow us to rebel against the selfish gene. Just through the nature of sexual reproduction, our genetic lineage will dilute itself. The children of your grandchildren will rarely utter your name if they remember it at all. Soon even the memories of their names will vanish. A new kind of cultural replicator, be they memes or something else, can allow you to live on in the hearts and minds of others. Beethoven had no direct descendants, yet his combined musical works ensure he will live on as long as humanity does.

At first glance, that is not a particularly reassuring message. Few of us will be able to reproduce the Ninth Symphony. But can something be evil if it is part of the natural circle of life? Maybe there is an afterlife; perhaps there isn’t. Maybe your name will live on in posterity or infamy, or not warrant a footnote in the grand history of everything. Life may be pointless, but it is also beautiful and a lot of fun. So, enjoy your I can haz a cheeseburger cat, dab with your friends, and retweet cute animals. And as you hum along to the chorus of Livin’ on a Prayer, take a moment to admire how that meme came from someone’s head across time and space to stick in yours.

Additional Reading/Sources:

The Selfish Gene

(Kindle Version): http://amzn.to/2HT3Tlt

(Dead Tree Version): http://amzn.to/2CLUYPc

The Extended Phenotype

 (Kindle Version): http://amzn.to/2HT3C26

(Dead Tree Version): http://amzn.to/2FBNhy3