Meme UP265
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.
Proponents theorize that memes are a viral phenomenon that may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution. Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance, each of which influences a meme's reproductive success. Memes spread through the behavior that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Memes that replicate most effectively enjoy more success, and some may replicate effectively even when they prove to be detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.
Memes are mostly humorous images and videos that are shared and edited by users of social media. In most cases, they are humorous, ironic or caustic comments on social, political and cultural issues or current affairs. They can be made with the help of a meme generator, which can crop the images (mostly sourced from the internet) into a rectangular form and overlay them with a short text, usually written in the Impact typeface. The most popular animal used for memes is the cat. The furry feline appears, for example, as lolcat (derived from the abbreviation LOL, or “laugh out loud”, and the word cat) or as ceiling cat. The term meme is derived from the Greek word mimēma (“imitate”) and was coined by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene in 1976. In the wake of digitisation, this definition was eventually used to describe the viral internet phenomena of image-text creations.
Proponents theorize that memes are a viral phenomenon that may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution. Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance, each of which influences a meme's reproductive success. Memes spread through the behavior that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Memes that replicate most effectively enjoy more success, and some may replicate effectively even when they prove to be detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.
Memes are mostly humorous images and videos that are shared and edited by users of social media. In most cases, they are humorous, ironic or caustic comments on social, political and cultural issues or current affairs. They can be made with the help of a meme generator, which can crop the images (mostly sourced from the internet) into a rectangular form and overlay them with a short text, usually written in the Impact typeface. The most popular animal used for memes is the cat. The furry feline appears, for example, as lolcat (derived from the abbreviation LOL, or “laugh out loud”, and the word cat) or as ceiling cat. The term meme is derived from the Greek word mimēma (“imitate”) and was coined by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene in 1976. In the wake of digitisation, this definition was eventually used to describe the viral internet phenomena of image-text creations.