Rant

Memes were first described in an obscure book that no one read except internet atheists to impress their virtual waifus.

nobody tell op that language evolves, this happens all the time and there will eventually just be a new word for the old thing 🤭

People posting funny images and calling them memes is a meme. And they don't get it.

I find it odd that if one guy just makes up a word, then that's what it is, but if millions of people all use it daily, in a different way, they are wrong.

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.

Everything is fluid over time. Every word, every construct changes. Sometimes human gender even changes, which Dawkins himself struggles to comprehend.

Just because we have one common use of the word meme doesn’t mean it loses its older use.

Words can be context bound to mean different things at once.

The older use may be considered archaic but like the word “archaic” I happen to really like those words.

This inflation of an important idea is symptomatic for the degeneration of humanity.

Everything eventually does.

It literally still works under the original usage with how it is commonly used today. Under Dawkins' original definition, the only thing humans do that isn't a meme is having kids. It's any non-genetic information that is shared.