Meme meme meme

Richard Dawkins, as we will learn, came up with the idea of memes to try to figure out how cultural ideas replicate. If genes have to do with biology, then memes have to do with memory. He ascribed a biological view to the transmission of memes through culture, using ideas from evolution to help us understand how cultural products transform and change. That's part of where the whole "viral" thing comes from.

Every week, at least, there's at least one serious meme (serious in that I see it everywhere) crossing my Facebook feed. Over the past two weeks it was this one:

Everyone, everywhere -- now if you look there's

religion professors, cultural anthropoloists, historians, biologists...I couldn't find a Mass Comm professor one though, which is ironic because Mass Comm profs are the ones most likely to be talking about this.

But one thing I'd like to make clear: Memes work not because they are viral, but because they are something we share and produce. The reason this meme (where did it start? Who remembers the first one?) is that someone could very easily make this very same powerpoint and put it up on Facebook and share it. Or on Twitter. Or Instagram. Or Google+ or whatever darn social network you like. This is our shareable writeable web.
We make it fun. That's something to remember - in the face of corporate power that shapes and control how we experience the Web, from our ability to get data to the way it appears on our computer screens - we can ultimately make and share things that are funny.

In my view, I guess, the memes show the power of cultural consumption and production. For all the same reasons that mass media theory assumed the mass man (and was wrong), all the ideas about viral sharing are wrong too. We share things because we ascribe cultural meaning to them. We bring some sort of emotional attachment to these things we make and share. We'll be learning about this idea of spreadablity, but this silly stupid meme of the week made me want to get this out early.