What is a meme?

About this episode

What is a meme? Thanks for asking! An internet meme is a viral piece of content which spreads online and is transformed by web users. Memes often grow rapidly, being shared on social media, blogs and by email. Some go viral and become well-known all over the world. Many are somewhat absurd, with no particular meaning or purpose, other than to make people laugh! The word meme first appeared in the 1970s. It was created by British ethologist Richard Dawkins, to explain how ideas replicate, mutate and evolve. The term was reappropriated in the internet age, and even Dawkins himself became a meme, in the new sense of the word! One of the first well-known internet memes dates back to 1996. It’s a video of a 3D dancing baby in a nappy. OK so internet weirdness is nothing new then! These days, a meme is an expression of internet culture. Just log in to Instagram, Twitter or Facebook and you can find the same original image transformed in tens of different ways. It grows and evolves for months, then disappears gradually. And memes aren’t just visual, some well-known audio examples include: the Nyan Cat music, the Simpsons laugh, a Hitler film line, the epic sax guy or the Trololo singer. If most of these sounds mean something to us, it’s because we’ve heard them plenty of times. They’ve been transformed by many creative web users, and are now part of popular culture, especially among millennials. So what causes an idea to become a meme? In under 3 minutes, we answer your questions! To listen the last episodes, you can click here: What is Globish? What is the P-Spot? What is a heatwave? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices