IEEE Spectrum August, 2011 - 28

The Selfish Meme
A new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet. it
is staring us in the face. it is still in its infancy, still drifting clumsily
about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary
change at a rate that leaves the old gene panting far behind.
-Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

A

t the end of his 1976
book The Selfish Gene,
geneticist Richard
Dawkins proposed the
idea of the meme, which
he described as "a unit
of cultural transmission"
analogous to the gene. The
meme idea was so powerful
that it quickly became a
meme itself as it spread
from mind to mind with
the peculiar inevitability
that seems to characterize
all memes. (Indeed, the
philosopher Daniel Dennett
28

has described the meme as
"an information-packet with
attitude.") For our purposes
here, the meme meme has
spawned a rather impressive
lexicon of terms, many of
which come from the field
of memetics, the study of
memes. (I'm indebted to
memeticist Tim Tyler and
the good folks at the website
Know Your Meme for many
of these terms.)
Although Dawkins's
analogue for the meme was
the gene, current meme

NA * iEEE SpEctrum * AuguSt 2011

By paul mcFedries

lingo is heavily weighted
toward epidemiology.
Thus, synonyms include
ideavirus, virus of
the mind, and thought
contagion. Similarly,
the medium that carries
a meme is called a vector,
the successful insertion of
a meme into a person's brain
is called an infection, and
the infected person is a host.
A readily contagious meme
is said to have sneezability.
An active meme affects
the behavior of its host, as
opposed to an inactive
or latent meme. A host
that reacts negatively-
for example, by advocating
censorship of the meme-
has a meme allergy. If the
meme causes self-destructive
behavior in the host-as, for
example, a meme about
martyrdom might-the host
is called a memoid, by
analogy with android. When
a prior infection by one
meme prevents a host from
being affected by another,
the original meme is called
an immuno-meme.
A grassroots meme
begins with, and is for the
most part propagated by,
ordinary users rather than,
say, a corporation. If some
big-time marketer fakes
a grassroots meme, then
you have an astroturf
meme. A similar idea is
the forced meme, which
is someone's deliberate
(and usually unsuccessful)
attempt to create a meme.
Memes that evolve
alongside a larger meme
are called comemes
or, since the two memes
have a kind of symbiotic
relationship, symmemes.
More specifically, a bait
meme offers some benefit to

the host if it adopts the main
meme. (For example, if the
main meme is Christianity,
the bait meme might be an
eternal afterlife.) Many main
memes also come with a
hook meme that, after the
host has taken the bait meme,
causes the host to replicate
the main meme. (In the
Christianity example, a hook
meme would be the idea of
spreading the gospel.) When
a main meme is surrounded
by one or more comemes,
the resulting constellation
of ideas is a meme complex
or a memeplex.
Forums that are prolific
generators of memes are
called memetic hubs, and
sites that are particularly
adept at spreading
existing memes are called
amplifiers. These sites
often specialize in certain
meme types, including the
phrasal template (such as
the snowclones I featured
in a 2008 column), the
image macro (a picture
with varying text, such as
LOLcat images), and the
subvertisement (a meme
hack that modifies an
ad to subvert its original
message). On the negative
side is the zombie lie, a
false statement that keeps
getting repeated no matter
how often it has been refuted.
Richard Dawkins became
famous in the 1970s for
his concept of the selfish
gene, and he has become
infamous in recent years
for his unyielding atheism.
But I predict that Dawkins
will be known, a hundred
years hence, not for these
contributions to science and
culture but for the concept of
the meme. Feel free to spread
that idea around.
o
spectrum.ieee.org

GreG Mably

technically speaking
http://spectrum.ieee.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum August, 2011
