Etymology of Memes

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there. My name is Eric. I’m from Southern California.

Welcome, Eric. What can we do for you?

Well, last week, a gentleman called in asking why his daughter would always say fail.

-huh.

And you guys had a great answer for him, which got me thinking,

What’s an internet meme, and where does the word meme come from?

Oh, very good. Very good question.

Internet meme.

Do you have any guesses?

I don’t.

Maybe something having to do with me, myself.

I don’t know.

Yeah, there’s a good guess.

We should define what an internet meme is.

How would you define it, Eric?

I guess maybe a trend that’s caught on, usually short-lived,

Often pretty popular in the short time span that it’s around.

Like, for example, what?

Well, fail, for example, is kind of an internet meme where, wow, there’s countless examples.

Oh, sure, yeah, tons of them.

Yeah.

Sometimes in the form of animated GIFs or silly YouTube videos or…

Or Rick Rolling.

Rick Rolling, sure.

There you go, there you go.

There you go.

The origin of this word is known, which it’s crazy how many words we don’t really know exactly who coined them and when, but we do with this one.

It comes from Richard Dawkins, who published a book in 1976 called The Selfish Gene.

And in this book, he lays out the idea of a meme.

And a meme, M-E-M-E, is something that is transmitted from person to person, usually culture.

And not culture, as he notes, not in the snotty elitist sense, but in the things that we all know, we all know how to do or that we all recognize.

And he gives a list here of memes, tunes, ideas, catchphrases, clothes, fashions, ways of making pots or building arches.

And so it’s all the information, ideas, and knowledge that we transmit from person to person, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously.

And you’re probably thinking now, well, this reminds me a lot of a virus that passes from person to person,

Which is why Internet meme and going viral are two terms that are closely related to the idea of something becoming unexpectedly popular

Or being passed from person to person in a natural, organic way.

And it makes sense that Dawkins would come up with that because he’s an evolutionary biologist, right?

Right, and an atheist.

Right, famous atheist, yeah.

His whole premise was, and there’s an article in New Scientist that we’ll link to on the website from 1976.

His whole premise was, is it possible that these things are transmitted from person to person or from group to group,

Not because it’s advantageous to the people, but because it’s advantageous to the ideas themselves?

It’s really kind of an astonishing thing.

What if we are merely the vessels of good ideas and that the end result of all life isn’t a perfect form of a being

That is alive and well, but a perfect idea.

There you go.

Deep philosophy.

So he took it from a Greek word, right?

That’s right.

That means to mimic.

That’s right.

And he wanted a word that sounded sort of like gene, right?

That’s right. Exactly right.

Sort of replicating idea across the internet.

The Greek word is M-I-M-E-M-A, that means that which is imitated.

And it caught on.

His book was very popular then.

It’s been popular since.

Many follow-ups.

He’s well known for the idea.

And most major dictionaries now include the word.

Wow.

Well, who would have thought such a small word has such a big history?

It filled a need, though. It did a job.

He came along with this word at a time in the philosophy of science

And in human culture and anthropology,

Where all these different disciplines were coming together,

And we needed new language to express some new concepts.

And he was there at the moment, and he had the word, and it caught on.

Hey, Eric, thanks a lot for calling.

No problem. Thank you for a very insightful answer.

Well, we try. Thanks for listening.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

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