The Meme as Meme (2015)

Re:The Meme as Meme (2015) by Tech-Noir on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @11:09AM (#16325375)

> Richard Dawkins, the famous evolutionary biologist who coined the word “meme” in his classic 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, seemed bent on disowning the Internet variety, calling it a “hijacking” of the original term.

I'd hardly call the video where he calls it "hijacking" showing him "bent on disowning the Internet variety":

https://youtu.be/GFn-ixX9edg?t=4m8s

Nor his attitude to the word being "reappropriated by the internet"[1]:

    The meaning is not that far away from the original.
    It's anything that goes viral.

    In the 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 and it 
    looks as though the word has been appropriated for a
    subset of that.

[1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/richard-dawkins-memes

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Meme as Meme (2015) by achileas on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @11:22AM (#16325477)

And he's absolutely correct. The article kind of lays out some tension between what could be analogized as artificial vs. natural selection which I don't think is actually there. The two types do happen, and often commingle, but I don't think it's a barrier to research as much as it is an opportunity.

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Re:The Meme as Meme (2015) by posterboy on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @05:35PM (#16328627)

I'm thinking of meme as a broader category than that, more of a trope.

Disclaimer: I'm not trying to hickack the term, but I think writing "disclaimer:" especially on HN is a meme, but not virulent.

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Re:The Meme as Meme (2015) by quickthrower2 on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @05:55PM (#16328727)

There are loads of HN memes. "strawman" "true scotsman" "this is why we can't have nice things" etc.

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