Meme

Viral redirects here, for viraL, see Ryan

Richard Dawkins' famous book.

The first intarwebz meme to reach the moronic masses.

This is just spam, you can ignore it if you want

A meme is a term coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. Originally used to describe packets of cultural information, it was adopted by the internet to describe viral lulz or Frunz. Its original meaning is no longer used except by sociology majors. In short, memes are a way for even friendless losers to have unfunny inside jokes.

The word meme is commonly used by people who aren't retarded because it is in fact shorter to write the word "meme" than to write out "internet phenomena" or "something that will wind up on G4 tomorrow for all of the nerds to fap all over". It is well known that the only people that care about internet memes are sad fucks with no life. In the real world, the meme is known by its true name, "idea."

Sometimes bloggers refer to memes as a word game or short quiz taken and posted as comment bait. The more comments a user receives about their results the higher the chances are of that thing spreading.

You can bet your life that every meme you know hasn't been funny since about 20 seconds after its inception, which was approximately one billion years ago for all memes. This means you is dead crap and not cool because you weren't on the forum where "fail" was invented in 76 BC. Int4netzzFTWlykyea.

	“	Throughout at least 100% of its history, homosapiens lived in small bands as nomadic hunter-gatherers. As language became more complex, the ability to remember and transmit information resulted in a new sort of replicator: the meme.	„
	—TOW, On the dawn of civilization

	“	It's not possible to understand it, and when you do understand it, then it's even worse.	„
	—Tom Green, On memes

	“	In the dawn of the new age of the aftermath of the second war of faggatorys,this will spark more lulz.	„
	—Michael Jackson, On lulz

Creation

A useful diagram illustrating how new memes are created.

A meme cannot be created by any one person. Every noob tries this over 9000 times. A meme, like the Herpes or AIDS, is a gift to be shared, something to be cherished, but not some lame token of glory for some basement dwelling no life fag. A meme is created by the reaction to, not the invention of, a subject (typically an image). In fact, the best memes are created by accident and are the result of a particularly lulzworthy image being seen by the right people at the right time.

However, IF YOU MUST try to create a meme, try sharing something unique on b instead of gay ass advice dog knockoffs.

Lifespan

The meme is the final stage in the life of a butterfly.

A meme is created via a complex system of pulleys and levers.

1. A meme is born.
2. Compounded overuse causes the meme to be burned into collective memory and distributed across the internet.
3. The meme reaches the bottom of the internet.
4. In some cases the meme has gone even lower and surfaced IRL.
5. Those that gave birth to the meme are filled with regret.
6. The meme lives on, spreading, and becoming more and more dumbed down for a mass audience, so that over time it bears little or no resemblance to the original.
7. The meme is put on Snorg Tees and Facebook bumper stickers.
8. Three to five years later it spontaneously resurfaces, makes its way to Uncyclopedia, slash-dot tags, and occasionally appearing on old media where if it has told no lies throughout its lifetime it finally becomes a real meme. During the final throes of an internet meme's slow and painful death it's visited by old friends and family who, upon seeing the agony the meme is suffering simultaneously facepalm and hope the whole mess would just end already so they can clean out its room and have a place to put all the gym equipment.

There are also forced memes. The idea behind a forced meme is that if you re-post something enough and pretend it's funny, it will eventually catch on. They are an odd occurrence, and rarely succeed in becoming real internet phenomena, though.

Crappy, fast fading memes happen everyday. Some examples include:

• YOU PAINTING WITH THE PENCIL?
  
• Penis Dog
  
• HOW CAN SHE SLAP?!?
  

Pronunciation

Getting mathematical.

Perhaps one the most interesting aspects of the topic of memes is the pronunciation of the word itself. Since the word meme is used primarily OTI in modern day, it's usually not spoken aloud. Thus, a great deal of confusion has formed amongst the retarded masses of the Internets. Very few people seem to know how it's properly pronounced, and idiots still argue (and probably always will) over how exactly one says the word meme. Some possibilities:

• Meem (with a long e sound)
• Mee Mee (two long e sounds)
• Mām (long a sound, like the word maim)
• May May (two long a sounds)
• Mem (with a short e sound)
• Meh Meh (two short e sounds)
• Mehmā (the faux-posh like to think it’s pronounced Memé)
• And any additional combination of the above sounds

Naturally, only one of these can be correct. Of course, anybody with a handful of brain cells can come to the conclusion that all but one of them sound fucking retarded. If you still can't figure out how it's pronounced, its the first one. Now that you know you should probably get back to being a loser and fapping at pictures of your 13 year old cousin, or what ever else it is you should be doing.

TL;DR: Anyone kewl enough to try and say this shit IRL is fucking retarded. This includes Justin Bieber, nobros, your dad, anyone currently reading this and faggots in general.

Gallery

Memes About missing Pics

• 
  Meme-based desktop wallpaper
• 
  Cutting the life short.
• 
  Ah fuck, I can't believe you've done this.
• 
  Dawkins being a newfag

[Collapse GalleryExpand Gallery]

• 
  Meme flowchart is a pretty cool guy. eh teaches the internet and doesn't afraid of anything.
• 
  NCIS on Mass Effect 2

Videos

The explanation why memes are bad and why you should feel bad laughing at them

Previous Video | Next Video

See Also

• Memes Portal
• Death of a Meme
• Forced meme
• IRL meme
• Memefag
• Meme Combining
• Nyu's Art Meme - Tart-lets ruin everything
• Old meme
• Pogs - Memes in Pog form
• Unfunny - What all memes are
• X is now a meme

External Links

• Wikipedia's list of internet phenomena - unsurprisingly, they avoid mentioning anything particularly funny or interesting.

Meme is part of a series on Memes Visit the Memes Portal for complete coverage.