subject: What are Internet memes? [print this page] What are Internet memes? What are Internet memes?
A meme is a new relatively newly coined term that reflects cultural ideas, symbols and practices. Internet memes are symbols of the Internet culture and most of them are humor-related.
Professor Richard Dawkins defines "meme" as an unit of cultural transmission, these units can be classified as "good" or "bad" and according to their classification they can be reinforced or eliminated.
Memes are transmited via human exposure, and then the humans replicate it, usually modifying them with their own culture to create new memes.
The term "internet meme" refers to ideas, concepts and catchphrases that spreads rapidly through multiple online media like forums, blogs, chat rooms, social media sites, video sharing, emails, imageboards and instant messaging.
Internet memes transmit ideas, which like genes, they self-replicate, respond and mutate. Internet memes are transmitted mostly through images and text, but some more advanced users can produce videos, audios and songs too to transmit the ideas carried by the meme.
Since the year 2005 there is a strong wave of forums and social networks that produce memes on a constant basis, often reproducing and adapting memes from other sites and forums.
Some of the most important memes on today internet culture are: trollface, rage guy, cereal guy, forever alone, challenge accepted and like a boss.
It's worth noting that most of today's popular memes are used to transmit the internet user's mood, for example "rage guy" is a meme that like it's name suggest is used when the user feels angry for some reason. In the same way, "forever alone" is a meme that carries a solitary and sad feeling.
Internet users often feel identified with these memes and use them outside their internet communities, this causes the internet memes to spread outside the internet in all kind of products and merchandising.
Most popular Internet memes are created by independent artists in sites like Deviant Art when they try to create new characters for webcomics and other kind of online art forms.
Some scientists consider memes in general as pseudoscience and a threat to the more serious study of cultural evolution, but internet memes are a whole different story.
