Come on, we're getting too philosophical. Viruses have genes, internet memes are just ideas.

What difference is there between information stored as proteins in a chains or as bytes on hard drive / neuron configuration in your brain.

We just got used to the DNA=life, but is this a valid assumption?

Some exotic lifeforms could encode their self-defining information on silicium magnetic polarisation, electron spin or whatever. And you would call them life if they were standing and moving in an animal-like way.

Do you know where the word meme comes from?

Of course, and that reinforces their status of imaginary genes.

I didn't read The Selfish Gene, the book that coined the term "meme", but I heard that it mostly explores that analogy, for a much broader definition of meme.