I strongly disagree. Meme is a term coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene, defining the idea of unit of cultural knowledge.

Basically, it's the smallest unit of cultural information. In the same sense as Gene it's the smallest unit of genetic information.

That's why it's pronounced Meme as in Gene.

None of this necessarily implies a joke.

You've got the technical definition correct, but the vast majority of usage of the term meme today is the colloquial usage, which is centered on humor, and has only a passing similarity to Dawkins' idea. Really, it's used today as a replacement term for what used to be called an "image macro", but also extends to cover video content.

For better or worse, that ship has sailed. Convincing people otherwise is going to go about as well as convincing them to not use "literally" in a figurative sense.

And unfortunately, that is literally impossible :P

From my online gaming experience, Gen Z seems to be adopting new usage of ‘meme’ that is decoupled it from virality. It’s used to discredit something as being a joke, falsehood or myth.

Wiktionary documents this usage since 2018:

> (Internet, slang) A myth circulating as truth, such as ineffective practices presented as effective.

> it’s a meme degree

> jogging is a meme

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/meme

An idea circulating through the population is more than sufficient to qualify it as a meme. "Virality", meaning prolific spreading, was never a necessary condition. Some memes are popular but some aren't, that has always been recognized.

Also jogging is quite literally a meme, from the 60s and 70s. That's when the pairing of the term and activity became popularized and spread through the population.

Meme seemed to be evolving to simply mean an image with some text on it. I’m glad for this new direction. At least it is related to the original meaning.

That definition is already antiquated, since that shift had already mostly happened by around 5 years on most internet platforms (internet culture evolves quick these days). As other commenters have mentioned, it's now "evolving" to be more or less synonymous with "joke"

> it's now "evolving" to be more or less synonymous with "joke"

Or disinformation:

    A: $GROUP_I_DONT_LIKE is doing $BAD_THING

    B: dude, that's literally just a meme

Which, thinking about it, is back around to almost the original definition.

Opposite.

A meme is NOT necessarily a joke. An "internet meme", a subset of memes, is generally a joke, but "meme" itself is a singular unit of culture, and includes many non-funny things

I would argue also that all jokes are memes: that all jokes ultimately have a core meme to them.

> but "meme" itself is a singular unit of culture

Yup. It's not a coincidence that it sounds like "gene". The idea was precisely to treat it like that - memes get passed from generation to generation, get mutated, mix with other memes.

Ironically enough, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance videogame from 2013 had a villain character who went on a monologue about memes, and a lot of people were confused by the way he used that term. But he described that original Dawkins definition really well.

> We are all pawns, controlled by something greater: Memes. The DNA of the soul. They shape our will. They are the culture — they are everything we pass on. Expose someone to anger long enough, they will learn to hate. They become a carrier. Envy, greed, despair… All memes. All passed along.

> but "meme" itself is a singular unit of culture

Yes, as per Richard Dawkins.

A joke that doesn't get repeated virally isn't a meme.

Not exactly. Memes are just cultural bits that get passed around, and virality is more like a measurement of how much they get passed around. Jokes have intrinsic memetic qualities (like this innate desire to get told again, for comedic value), which makes them great memes.

Check out the book "There Is No Antimemetics Division". A brilliant tour of all things meme (and anti-meme).

The meme is the format, the joke is how that format is appropriated for humor.