2008-08-03, 02:29 PM
Afrobean Wrote:You're thinking too Internet-culture-centric. "Eat my shorts" is a meme. Haven't you ever wondered where the word "meme" comes from? It's derived from the Greek god of memory mneme (who also led her name to words like "mnemonic"). In the simplest terms I can think of to verbalize, I would say a meme is merely an abstract idea which can (or HAS) spread socially to others. Try giving the wikipedia article on it a solid read.
And again, memes need not be widespread either. They can be limited to subcommunities. Even subgroups of subcommunities. Technically, memes centered around a particular website's /b/ board would be a subgroup of that site's community, nestled within the greater grouping of all chans, which itself is nested with the grouping of the Internet. I would even go as far as to say all a meme needs in order to exist is 2 people, even if it's not all that interesting a concept merely sharing thoughts between two people to create and transmit memes.
Who started the chinchilla meme?
