The word “meme” and examples of it are certainly known by just about anyone who has used the internet, but what are the roots of this cultural phenomenon? First on the history line, was the creation of the word. Richard Dawkins, an author who coined the term in his 1989 book ‘Selfish Genes’, needed a noun

that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to ‘memory’, or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘cream’.

Simply put, it is an idea that spreads between people within a cultural, so it could be transferred over a wide form of mediums; written,orally,visually, or how the way many of us are familiar with, online. The notion of memes on this site predominantly refers to the image macros that circulate and spread online, ideas that can both be produced and consumed by anyone, although they’ll usually only be effective, or understood, if created/consumed by someone within the culture.This is a huge difference from traditional media where the consumers are usually lurkers and the producers are the technocratic, a select few with the knowledge or skill to produce content.

The image macros are a textbook definition of memes, they are a digital representation of an idea within a cultural, in our case NY cultural, spread among people, anyone who views the meme. It does not matter if the consumer is or is not apart of the cultural that is being referred to, as the consumer only needs to be able to understand the idea to get the joke. The producer of a meme also does not necessarily need to be apart of the cultural, it is more important that they understand the ideas of the cultural. This is what allows memes to spread as far as they do, many might not be apart of the cultural being referred too, but these individuals can understand the idea being referred too.

Source:

Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, p. 192