• merc@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    This is more-or-less the format used for the motivational posters that were popular in offices in the 90s or so. People made fun of those with demotivational posters. But, those weren’t really “memes”, IMO.

    But, the earliest thing that I think deserve the name “memes” (normally called Image Macros) were on the Something Awful forums (and soon after that on 4chan). In the early days they were mostly animal based: “lolcat”, “doge”, the “O RLY?” owl, etc.

    Can someone point to “memes” that had the text underneath the picture, rather than using the impact font and written directly on top of the picture?

        • ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world
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          21 hours ago

          Devoting oneself to one’s art, impoverishing oneself in the pursuit of Truth, or welcoming martyrdom for one’s cause do not, it seems, represent behaviours which are obviously beneficial to the individual of for the spread of that individual’s genes. So, given that this kind of behaviour clearly exists, and is widespread, what is reaping the benefit? Dawkins’ somewhat surprising answer was the ideas themselves. Ideas are clearly in competition with each other so perhaps there’s a selection process going on, analogous to natural selection, through which some ideas prove successful and spread whilst others die out. He concluded that there was such a selection process and, to emphasise the parallel to natural selection, he coined the term “meme” which come from an ancient Greek root, “mimeme”, meaning imitated thing.

          What’s in a Meme?

            • ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world
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              20 hours ago

              meme noun [C] (ON INTERNET)

              an idea, joke, image, video, etc. that is spread very quickly on the internet

              • Take a look at the top ten internet memes for this past year.
                • Alaknár@sopuli.xyz
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                  17 hours ago

                  Yes, it’s literally in the definition. Even ideas are memes.

                  A meme is to culture what a gene is to biology.

                • ExtremeUnicorn@feddit.org
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                  15 hours ago

                  I wouldn’t say that viral videos are memes, they are viral videos. But their content can become a meme, which could be a quote from it or some kind of content shown in a different context.

                  E.g. the Area51 Naruto runner is a meme, but the report where he appears is not.