this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2025
-4 points (38.9% liked)

Rant

517 readers
49 users here now

A place where you can rant to your heart's content.

Rules :
  1. Follow all of Lemmy code of conduct.
  2. Be respectful to others, even if they're the subject of your rant. Realize that you can be angry at someone without denigrating them.
  3. Keep it on Topic. Memes about ranting are allowed for now, but will be banned if they start to become more prevalent than actual rants.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org
-4
The word "meme" has been hijacked by ignorants. (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by notsosure@sh.itjust.works to c/rant@lemmy.sdf.org
15 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Originally, meme was defined as the counterpart of the gene. From Wikipedia: "In the popular science book The Selfish Gene, published in 1976, the English term meme was coined by Richard Dawkins to describe the dissemination of cultural information, but in the course of the digital revolution it was used to describe a specific type of internet phenomenon.” Thus, today a meme is a photo of Kim Kardesian’s fat ar$e with a stupid text, not a philosophical concept. This inflation of an important idea is symptomatic for the degeneration of humanity.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 weeks ago

I understand your irritation when the word is used for any and all text on images, but can you appreciate that for most memes, the word is being used for it's intended purpose?

I'm thinking primarily of jokes that use templates. Mark Grayson asking a question and having his dad enthusiastically reply "That's the neat part: you don't!" contains a highly transmissible concept, and acts as a vector for transmitting a whole bunch of ideas that fit within that concept. Any time something feels like an elder or authority figure responding to concern or confusion in this unconcerned way, you can summarize the feeling with this simple hieroglyph.

Linguistically, I think that's pretty awesome.