The most common way to define meme is that when any piece of cultural item that is transferred from one mind to other. This passing can happen in a number of ways. The most ways of passing the item is through speech, gestures, writing, and rituals among any other form of imitable phenomena. Just like genes that are present in our body are the basic building blocks of biological life, memes are also the basic building blocks of each and every one of our minds and cultures. They are so close to genes as they also have the capability to replicate by themselves and the ability to respond to selective pressures as well. Just like the biological evolution, memes also work following the same principles.
It was not until the year 1976 the meme was known. This word was first used by the famous British biologist Richard Dawkins. He first used the word mimeme and shortened it in his now famous book “The selfish Gene”. He defined the word that could be referred to anything that an observer might consider as a replicator and defined it as a unit of cultural transmission or a unit of imitation. Many theorists who studied meme for a long time has stated that all memes evolve through natural selection like many processes such as competition, inheritance, variation and mutation. It has been stated in the book that not all memes has any benefit with them and they generally spread within the host due to their unique behaviors. The memes generally replicate with the help of humans as they are the most efficient copiers of behavior and imitation. But at the same time it has been noted that some of the meme often changes its tune when it passes from one human to another as most humans will forget a little bit of it and will try to refine them and sometimes they will change them to such extent that they will create a new meme. A change is a very good thing when it comes to meme as these subtle changes will help a meme to survive where an old meme that has not changed at all could fall without a blink.
How It Spreads
Just like a contagious disease the memes also spread like them from one person to another. The memes that are very good means the ones that have strong signs of replicating factor in them has a tendency to leave more copies of themselves in minds of people, and the really strong ones are eventually written in books, newspapers or on websites. This factor gives them a strong chance to survive more and thrive among a huge base of humans. The memes that does not have strong replicating factors often gets lost from the minds of people and eventually they dies. The most popular form of memes that are found in the world is the internet memes. This works similar to the pre historic memes but like a digital file that gets transferred from one person to another with the help of emails and social media websites or through any other medium that is available in the internet.
Due to their rapid rise, due to the fact that they are very funny many people are creating their own memes and submitting them. Just like them you can also create a meme and submit your best meme also. There are many websites dedicated for just memes where you get to know the most popular meme faces also. At the same time there are many community for meme generators available where you can check all the latest memes.