There is an ill-used category for posts to this site called “I’ve been thinking.” First, I normally post as to substantive matters and have even stopped posting about the aggravating Red Sox. Second, as has been suggested by some readers, if I presume to believe that I am thinking then I am truly out of my depth. BUT I feel compelled to provide the below petulant post about the word “meme.”
What the hell is a meme? Seems it covers every thing and idea that circulates. How did that happen? I know language evolves, but I am a traditionalist and believe it should evolve rarely, slowly and, if you will, from the top down. Serious people, scientists, ought to add much-needed words in the pursuit of progressive society. But all of sudden, everyone is calling everything a meme. We even have the President producing a meme coin, and there is a putative marketplace for meme tokens as an asset class.
As I like to lie to myself by saying that I am a modern writer who is part of the modern genre, I retreated to seek counsel from my newly-trusted adviser GPT: “What is a meme,” I asked. Today, it is an idea, a behavior, a phrase, an image, or a style that spreads socially by imitation. As I guessed: it is everything that is popular. Seems to me that, as such, we do not need the word at all, we can just talk about any subject currently if it is generally known, not bother to establish a new category. For example, if you are talking about the Red Sox you describe them as such and do not think “I am talking about a meme called the Red Sox.”
In fact, and many seem to have known this well before I today consulted GPT, the word did come from the scientific vector, a1975 biology text called “The Selfish Gene.” The author I am sure did not intend to invent a new word for general usage of anything. He was talking genetics, not pop music or a worthless physical token bearing the image of a sitting President. Why then did society extrapolate this analogy?
It seems clear to me that it is the result of our electronic culture, the ubiquitous presence of electronic mass communication. Everyone consumes the same thing. Something new has intrigue, cache, proof of exciting newness.
Do you find use for this word and, if so, is it in dismissive context (eg “not another meme” or as I have asked “what the hell is a meme anyway”)? Or is it now the way you refer to things of general cultural popularity, regardless of category. Put another way, is this whining, testy post that you are perhaps still reading itself a meme, applying the word to an entire posted literature bemoaning the existence of a word in normal usage?
Future posts will be of substance and not passing peevishness. Meme-hatred has now been expunged from my system. We will return to your regularly scheduled broadcasts…..