OED
1.
1976 A cultural element or behavioural trait whose transmission and consequent persistence in a population, although occurring by non-genetic means (esp. imitation), is considered as analogous to the inheritance of a gene.1976 The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun which 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... It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'. Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. R. Dawkins, Selfish Gene xi. 206
1976 A rational person who hasn't acquired any variety of the God meme described by Richard Dawkins. New Scientist 9 December 619/2
1986 Congruence of the patterns of morphometric and cultural evolution in these islands suggests..that the differentiation has been influenced by a colonization history involving restricted gene and meme flow between archipelagos, subsequent drift, and possibly founder effects. Canadian Journal Zoology vol. 64 1576
1993 I'm not sure what happens to such a culture when radical Maoism is replaced by the far more seductive meme of Western consumer culture. Wired February 132/2
1998 On all other dimensional planes, memes could only exist as parasites, dwelling in the host brains or mental processes of physical beings. D. Brin, Heaven's Reach 27
2.
1998 An image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations. Also with modifying word, as internet meme, etc.1998 The next thing you know, his friends have forwarded it [sc. an animation of a dancing baby] on and it's become a net meme. Sci. & Technol. Week (transcript of CNN TV programme) (Nexis) 24 January
2000 The best internet memes replicate quickly, gaining authenticity and achieving mythical status as their familiarity grows. Guardian 10 August (Online section) 11/3
2002 Often you attach the meme you intend to spread, and frequently it is no more 'important' than a separated-at-birth gag involving George Bush and a monkey. Vancouver Sun (Nexis) 26 January d5
2013 Read the 3,000-word Wikipedia article on 'Rickrolling' for an example of how a meme can eat itself several times over within the space of five years. T. Chatfield, Netymology xv. 49
I googled 'memesis' and got this from AI:
While "memesis" is not a standard English word, it likely refers to the concept of imitating or representing reality, specifically within the context of internet memes. It is a modern term derived from two existing words:Mimesis: A Greek term in philosophy and literary criticism that means "imitation" or "representation of the real world".Therefore, "memesis" combines these ideas to describe the process by which an online community collectively defines itself by generating and spreading internet memes. >p> Key characteristics of "memesis"Meme: An idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture, often with a humorous or relatable image or video.
A product of digital communities: It is the way that online groups of people build a sense of shared identity and culture.Community self-definition: The community creates its own image by collectively deciding which memes are the funniest or most accurate.
Iterative and evolving: Like memes themselves, "memesis" is a constant cycle of creation and recreation. A meme that is no longer shared or adopted by the community will eventually die out.
Subconscious and collective: This process happens outside of intellectual theory. Rather than analyzing their own ideas, people define their community's identity by simply sharing and liking content that resonates with them.
Memesis: community and self-definition in the age of memes Pierre Chaumont at digicult.it
Disaster‑Funny in Postdigital Age: Memesis and the Composite Nature of Humor in Crisis Farouk El Maarouf Vol:.(1234567890)Postdigital Science and Education (2025)
...Examining memes’ role in altering perceptions of catastrophic events, the paper illustrates how memetic humor reflects societal anxieties and trivializes dire situations. Memesis is portrayed as a self-deprecating mechanism navigating the inherent anxieties in creating and consuming humorous content during crises.
Taussig and Mimesis Michael Demers (note: this is a review of Memesis and Alterity by Michael Taussig)
The Civil War of Memes Daniele Nanni at Medium (29xi25), so clear that I've copied most of it
In the early 2010s, memes were amateur sketches of internet life. Rage comics, "trollface," and "bad luck Brian" belonged to a period of collective play where humour travelled faster than meaning.They spread because they were light, easy to make, replicable, and recognisable. A decade later, the same mechanism has been converted into a political tool. Although irony has always served politics, what’s different now is the speed, scale, the algorithmic amplification, and the live feedback.
A meme that once mocked bad dates or office boredom now circulates as a bullet for propaganda, sharpened through irony, accelerated by social media, and amplified by tribal identity.
When Donald Trump reposted a AI-generated video of himself airdropping feces on "No Kings" protesters from a fighter jet, he was staging a spectacle, one meant to entertain his followers and provoke outrage from his critics. Political cartoonists have done something similar for centuries, but never with such reach, velocity, and recursive power.
Within hours, the responses to viral posts become new content: screenshots of angry replies, counter-memes mocking the outrage, articles analysing the controversy. The reaction is the point.
Political cartoons spoke to audiences, while memes create feedback loops with them. This is because memes are participatory and recursive. Each post invites an immediate counter-meme. Each angry reaction gets captured, circulated, and mocked, feeding the cycle.
The line between joke and formal declaration has dissolved as memes no longer comment on events; they become the events, the presidential announcement, the rallying cry, the press release, all pre-packaged for emotional reaction.
Each image capable of triggering agreement or outrage. The "Rage Comic" era rewarded participation, where users laughed together, remixed templates, and expanded a collective inside joke. The act of sharing was social play, a form of belonging that asked for wit but not conviction.
The current meme economy, by contrast, rewards escalation. Platforms measure creativity through intensity: the sharper the reaction, the greater the reach. Wit still matters, but only when it provokes, so a lazy, inflammatory meme will outperform a brilliant, gentle one. In this attention economy, the meme becomes both the weapon and the battlefield itself.
A meme compresses emotion, ideology, and identity into a fraction of a second. It achieves what long speeches or essays cannot: a micro-dose of belonging.
You see Pepe with laser eyes and you know immediately: this person is part of a certain digital circle. You see someone at a protest in an inflatable frog costume and you recognise joyful defiance before you’ve consciously thought about it. The image arrives faster than language. You feel the affiliation before you parse the meaning.
Susan Sontag wrote that photographs furnish evidence. Memes furnish something else: instant belonging.
The visual economy online functions like a civil war of signs, where irony and sarcasm replace gunfire, and remix culture becomes logistics. Each faction fights to dominate the terrain of meaning itself: who owns humour, who defines what’s normal, who gets to claim they represent the future.
...When anti-fascist demonstrators march in inflatable suits to mock authoritarian behaviour, they’re stealing spectacle back from power, turning state violence into farce, and exposing control as absurd theatre. When reactionary groups flood platforms with ironic memes, they’re asserting the right to offend, wrapping ideology in humour, and rejecting what they see as censorious control.
The strategy in both cases is the same: irony and spectacle operate as a semiotic shortcut, condensing complex emotions and beliefs into shareable signs.
...In current times, the meme is the new spectacle: portable, ironic, and infinitely replicable. It reduces ideology to choreography: outrage, humour, applause. In this landscape, sincerity and cynicism coexist. The same internet user can potentially mock authoritarianism one day and amplify it the next, protected by irony. As reality fractures into streams of aesthetic fragments, faith migrates from institutions to imagery.
The rise of generative AI has even supercharged this process. Anyone can now conjure a meme, illustration, or absurdist image in seconds, stripping humour of effort and context. For some, this creative flood represents democratic expression; for others, it is cultural noise, low-effort "slop" that dilutes authenticity and meaning.
Whether human or synthetic, the meme now outpaces reflection itself, fracturing reality into endless streams of aesthetic fragments.
What matters is not whether the content is true, but whether it feels right, whether it fits the tribe’s emotional syntax.
Irony has become an engine of memetic warfare, granting what might be called plausible deniability: the ability to wound without consequence.
"Just a joke" is a defensive reflex that keeps harmful messages circulating under the radar of moderation and shame.
For the far right, irony serves as camouflage, embed transgressive messages in humour and transforming ideology into a spectacle.
Progressive groups use irony to deflate power, transforming protests into a carnival. In Portland, inflatable dinosaurs and frogs mocked the serious violence of riot gear, exposing the absurdity of control.
Both approaches depend on a similar cultural grammar based on distance, humour, and spectacle.
This oscillation between sincere emotion (shared grief, outrage, pride) with ironic detachment (humour, absurdism, self-mockery defines) is what defines metamodernism. The mood of an age caught between earnestness and exhaustion.
As Vermeulen and van den Akker write, metamodernism "oscillates between modern enthusiasm and postmodern irony."
Online, that oscillation turns into a tactical tool. A single meme can convey belief and disbelief simultaneously, letting users signal conviction while keeping a safe distance from it.
This ambiguity encourages participation, as everyone can project their own meaning onto the joke. However, it often erodes responsibility, sustaining engagement while draining it of commitment.
Seen through a systems lens, memes act like nodes in a feedback network. Algorithms reward engagement; engagement rewards extremity. Every share reinforces the pattern: attention breeds attention.
The network "learns" that outrage performs better than nuance, and that humour travels faster than context. The system feeds on polarity because it increases circulation. In cybernetic terms, memes enable positive feedback loops, amplifying signals toward three possible endpoints: system destabilisation and collapse, sustained chaos that becomes the new normal, or eventual signal exhaustion where audiences simply tune out. At the moment, we don't yet know which future we're building.
Both the authoritarian aesthetic of strength and the anti-authoritarian aesthetic of parody are adaptive responses within the same attention economy.
Each depends on visibility, virality, and emotional resonance. What differs is the value they try to stabilise: obedience or play.
The deeper structure, however, remains identical: a media environment that transforms political discourse into performance art.
The 'civil war of memes' is therefore not only ideological but systemic. Both sides exploit the same attention economy, but toward opposite ends: one uses spectacle to challenge concentrated power, the other to reinforce it.
In this battlefield of signs, irony has become the standard language of political life. The question is no longer whether memes shape reality, since, to a significant extent, they demonstrably do.
The question is whether any side can win battles fought entirely in simulation, or whether the battlefield itself is the only victor.
Memes: An Ancient History Giles Crouch
Five centuries before the internet, before anyone had heard of algorithms or influencers, a frustrated theology professor discovered what every creator of a viral meme has learned since: once you release something into the cultural thoughtstream, it no longer belongs to you. It belongs to everyone who recognizes themselves in it.That was Martin Luther in what is now Germany with his 95 theses, essentially a collection of complaints against the Catholic church. Over 400,000 pamphlets that used his various theses and his image had flooded Europe. Even he was taken aback. Could that have been the first viral meme?
...they remain today, much as they always have, existing in a liminal cultural space and a paradox of being both unifying and divisive. Such duality is a feature of culture and this is what makes them so culturally relevant.
...Memes work in liminal cultural spaces, unlike longer form content such as articles, news stories, documentaries and movies. For those that share them, memes are a key social signal declaring their tribal belonging. Memes reflect shared identity. More than that, they constitute identities. Sociologist Emile Durkheim called this "collective conscience". A form of social ritual that gives us a dopamine hit and a desire to share it and signify with whom we feel we belong. Which is another aspect of what makes memes so powerful.
The liminal space memes occupy in culture could be distinguished by their place between the sacred (set apart, charged with collective meaning) and the profane (the everyday mundanity.) They transform the profane (like a frog face, or a weirdly smiling kid) into sacred tokens of group identity. If one doesn't "get" the meme, then they're an outsider. It's why they work so well in politics. Their symbolic images serve as a way to consolidate in-group identity while ridiculing outsider groups.
...it’s often not the content that is what matters. It’s the power and recognition of shared meaning. In a way too, memes have sort of carnival-like qualities to them. The temporary subversion of power through humour and grotesqueness.
In this way they serve as what we call in anthropology "tribal boundary markers", which can be physical (like totems visible around an area, warning outsiders to sod off or, maybe, be eaten in a big soup), or psychological, such as memes.
...Part of what makes memes so effective is this unique ability to combine relatability with a sense of detachment. This type of humour engages what psychologists refer to as "cognitive reappraisal," a technique where people reinterpret negative experiences in a way that feels less distressing.
What is World History from a Metamodern Perspective? Hanzi Freinacht at Medium
Memes are patterns that are imprinted, not into the molecules of the creature, their DNA, but into some more readily changeable part of the body, like connections between nerve cells. Memes are memories, learned skills and crafts, stories, ideas, taken-for-granted assumptions, languages. They are transferable patterns imprinted in a more abstract layer of bodily configurations (as compared to DNA). And they transfer through communication and imitation....And metamemes are the fundamental patterns of the memes themselves. The memes don't emerge independently, but in relation to each other. They emerge as functions of larger, more fundamental, overarching metamemes.
...memes are the most fundamental category of history.
...Cultural history must thereby, necessarily, be the history of how all memes emerge, how they struggle, combine, and evolve, and how they steer the world. Because culture consists of memes, whereas genes can only be transferred and experimented with through new generations, through new bodies (with some leeway for epigenetic factors, i.e. how genes are turned on and off during a lifetime), memes can evolve much more quickly and according to another logic entirely. And that logic is culture, and its development is "history". An event is "historical" because it's memetically significant. Events that don't change memes aren't really "historical"
...Memes are like ghosts-of-abstraction that, as it were, possess the biological bodies of their carriers. They emerge through ongoing interactions between human beings, and then take over those same human beings and control the movements of their bodies, shaping very specific patterns of movements of the body. Biologically, I can be a light-skinned homo sapiens with green irises and long legs. Culturally, I can be a Russian-speaking, socialist ballet dancer. Through the medium of my biological body, memes "remote-control" me and make me do pirouettes for the glory of Stalin. When I open my mouth to speak, my tongue will move in a specifically Russian manner. I'm a memetic creature as much as I'm a genetic one — just as much as I'm a physical object with a certain mass, speed, and position in space-time. I have emerged on all these levels: physical, biological, and cultural.