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Memetics: An Introduction

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The term “memetics” was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It proposes that just as genes are units of information that self-replicate and evolve, so too can “memes” as units of cultural information.

Memes as Ideas: Dawkins defined a meme as “an idea, a behavior, or a practice that spreads from person to person within a culture.” Think of it as a cultural unit, like a song, a fashion trend, a belief system (e.g. veganism), or a catchphrase. Today memes mostly spread through social media and thus there is a need to study the flow of memes through them, to understand how they influence our thoughts and values.

Types of Memes

Memes have properties that influence their transmissibility (virality potential) either positively or negatively.

  • antimeme (high impact, low virality): taboos, uncomfortable / complex truths
  • boring (low impact, low virality): random dataset, most ads
  • meme (low impact, high virality): viral videos, slang, norms
  • supermeme (high impact, high virality): wars, crisis, drama

Memes and the Medium

The same meme may spread differently depending on the social medium (social zeitgeist, group-think) they flow in.

Memes and People

  • Creators: Creating original / strongly altered memes.
  • Spreaders: Spreading existing memes.
  • Consumers: Consuming memes.

Abstraction of Natural Language

What is the rate of abstraction in natural language (spread of new words that represent a novel composite concept)? How does it differ between languages? How does it affect society?

Perfect project to make some analysis: https://github.com/rspeer/wordfreq/tree/master

Who controls the language, controls the thoughts. -> New words spark new thoughts. Thus to control the masses, control which words (concepts) are spread via media and education systems that favor your agenda (how you want people to think about the world).

To understand who is responsible for the adoption of new words one has to research the origin of new terms and analyze the source of first spreaders.

Another thought formation scheme is shifting the context (perceived connotation) of terms. New words for the same concept but with different connotation (e.g. fat vs overweight). Words are tools for thought, they shape how we can think of the world.

Examples

  • "Conspiracy theory": calling an idea a conspiracy theory delegitimizes the idea without substance (rational arguments)
  • "Have to": I have to work vs I want to work - using "have to" to think about things reduces self-agency
  • "Invest in education" vs "spend on schools": investment implies future returns

Questions of Interest

  • How do memes spread through social networks (real vs digital)? culture (music, movies)?
  • Direct vs subliminal memes (hidden messages programming the subconsciousness)
  • Who creates new memes vs spread existing memes? Who blocks memes (selective meme spreading)?
  • Which hidden creator networks start to spread similar memes at the same time?
  • Surface gaps in scientific publishing indicating hidden or indirect censorship
  • How much control do I have over my meme intake (social media scroll of doom)?
  • Can we pinpoint the cultural shift to wokeness and back to anti-wokeness? Who is changing their positions based on memes often (easy to manipulate)?
  • How does the observer effect influence the meme flow (being aware of current meme flows)?

References

#idea