Memes and the Internet (It’s pronounced “meem”)

1. Memes and the Internet (It’s pronounced “meem”) Ever had a bit of a song stuck in your head? That’s a meme. A meme is an idea that serves no real purpose and spreads from person to person much like a disease. The most frequently seen memes are commercials and jingles, we remember them and talk about them but in and of themselves they serve no real purpose. Memes spread by being attractive in some way, some are funny, some sound cool, some are scary, any emotion it can evoke that people want to share with others. Some classic examples are jingles, art styles, and jokes. Negative effects While in many cases the new strength of memes is not a problem some memes are not exactly innocent little bits of humor or enjoyment. Urban legends are a powerful type of meme, they substitute something interesting or exciting for something true, and can cause an awful lot of confusion. Since the advent of the internet urban legends and other memes like them have gained the strength to influence great numbers of people, causing them to assume illogical viewpoints and act in foolish or even dangerous ways. The power the internet gives memes means it is important to look for actual facts as opposed to something that merely sounds good. A series of Burma Shave ads, A long lasting advertising meme The Internet The strength of a meme is in its popularity, its all about the number of people it infects. Memes are like mental viruses, and like viruses they can die out quickly and only infect a small group, or they can spread far and wide. The internet is to memes what a school is to colds, a way to spread them quickly to a lot of people. With the internet creating and spreading a meme requires very little effort and they reach a much larger audience than they ever did before, the result is downright biological. Memes starting so quickly that they have to compete for attention has resulted in a process similar to natural selection, only the strong survive for long. The internet has turned memes from something like the flu which could spread between physical people or on objects into a hyper mutagenic bio-warfare plague whizzing through the air at the speed of light, mutating into something stronger every time it is contained. The LOLcat to the left is a powerful but harmless meme. A much more unpleasant meme convinced thousands that gel candles like the one above could explode.