Memes, mimes and genes

Memes have become part of the daily fabric of the internet and social media. It's hard to go a day online without coming across a Distracted Boyfriend, Success Kid or "One does not simply" meme.  In fact if you Google meme today, you will get more than three billion search results. However, despite its prevalence in modern society, you might be surprised to learn the word meme was actually coined 44 years ago.

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins created the word in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, introducing the concept as a unit of human culture that is spread from person to person, comparing it to a replicator - the theoretical base unit in the gene-centric idea of evolution. He was even kind enough to outline the etymology and the correct pronunciation for us:

"We need a name for the new replicator, a noun which conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme.  If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'." 

"Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain, via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation."

So there you have it. Dawkins created the word meme from the Greek mimeme, 'something that is imitated' (also the root of the verb 'to mime') and gene from the Greek genos meaning 'birth, kind or offspring'. In an interview with Wired, the scientist said he had no issue with the internet's hijacking of the word and highlighted that when he created the concept, he likened memes to a virus, spreading from person to person:

"The meaning is not that far away from the original," he said. "It's anything that goes viral. In that original introduction to the word meme in the last chapter of The Selfish Gene, I did actually use the metaphor of a virus. So when anybody talks about something going viral on the internet, that is exactly what a meme is."