In his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene", Richard Dawkins introduced an entity known as a meme.
Memes are entities that primarily inhabit human minds (but you can find them in other places as well). To express it simply, a meme is an idea. Some modern day examples of memes are musical phrases, jokes, trends, fashions, car designs, and poetry. Any thought or idea that has the capacity to replicate is a meme. A well used example of a meme is the first four notes of Beethoven's 5th symphony. Another example is the "Happy Birthday" song. These are ideas that inhabit our minds and have been very successful at replicating. Not only have these memes found their way into literally millions of minds, they have also managed to leave copies of themselves on paper, in books, on audiotape, on compact disks, and in computer hard-drives.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2004-06-01 08:55 pm (UTC)Whats a meme?
no subject
Date: 2004-06-01 09:10 pm (UTC)From here.
The LJ "meme" is a subset.