8 ms·

I don’t think they qualify as memes to be honest. For a lot of people “meme” is synonymous with just “funny picture” it seems, but a real meme is something more

I don’t think they qualify as memes to be honest. For a lot of people “meme” is synonymous with just “funny picture” it seems, but a real meme is something more than just a funny picture. I think Wikipedia puts it quite well: > An internet meme, commonly known as just a meme, is an activity, concept, catchphrase, or piece of media that spreads, often as mimicry or for humorous purposes, from person to person via the Internet. The spreading from person to person being the crucial part.

mirimir 8y ago
> The spreading from person to person being the crucial part. People mailed them to each other.
sverige 8y ago
Well, there was no internet a hundred years ago. Nor photocopiers. But I'll bet these spread like wildfire from person to person back then, limited only by how willing the original viewer was to risk losing their copy to a family member or friend. And back then, family members and friends spent a lot more time together in close physical proximity. And now that they've been digitized, you can guarantee that at least one of us here is going to do our part to fulfill the original and best purpose of the internet, which is to share funny pictures of cats. These are extraordinary specimens!
tokai 8y ago
Both the word and the concept has become a meme. Nitpicking its "real" meaning is misunderstanding the meme.
bachmeier 8y ago
> a real meme is something more than just a funny picture. > The spreading from person to person being the crucial part. The article says: "They were called postcards, or souvenir cards, and mailing them to friends and relatives was immensely popular for sharing a gilded, snowy holiday scene or even a lolcat."
- codetrotter 8y ago
  I was being overly simplistic. I still think there is a difference between individually forwarding a funny picture to others, and what a meme is. In order to be a meme, I should have said that it needs to be adopted and adapted by a collective of people. A postcard sent by me to my friends with a cute cat is not a meme. An image macro that I make and share to a collective group of my friends and them making variations of it makes the image a meme.
  - pixl97 8y ago
    >A postcard sent by me to my friends with a cute cat is not a meme. And when they send it to others, who send it to others, then it is a meme.
    - drdeca 8y ago
      I think only if some of them make modifications or variations on it. Or, at least, that should be required to make it a central example of the concept?
  - egfx 8y ago
    is this a meme? http://qr.ae/TUGRIY http://qr.ae/TUGRIY
    - drdeca 8y ago
      Yeah, (Or perhaps an instance of one or more memes? But that would probably a definition and inconvenient to say, so I will say yes,) that image is a meme.
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
  >They were called postcards, or souvenir cards Wait! People nowadays don’t know what a postcard is?
kbutler 8y ago
> I don’t think they qualify as memes to be honest. For a lot of people “meme” is synonymous with just “funny picture” it seems, but a real meme is something more than just a funny picture. Agreed. > it needs to be adopted and adapted by I don't think you get to target your pedantism quite so tightly. A meme before about 2005 was "an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture" (m-w.com). The "image macro" meaning (meme-ing?) with adaptation is a very recent interpretation (lolcats and icanhazcheezburger?), and as you said above, "a lot of people" don't necessarily even think of "meme" that way.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  A “meme” before 2005 was a made-up word that only Richard Dawkins and a few other people ever used (a way of extending his discussion of self-replication in evolutionary biology to cultural phenomena), and many other people thought was a rather pointless synonym for “idea” or “concept” built on a flimsy analogy. Then people on the web decided they needed a word for “popular funny picture with lots of remixes”, and adopted that word (maybe as a joke?).
  - cicero 8y ago
    I discovered the word "meme" on Usenet discussion groups back in 1992. It was a well-known idea in the Hacker News of that day, and was being applied to things that were being passed around on the Internet. However, since this was before the web had caught on, the memes were all textual. I was not surprised then when I saw the term used in its present, graphical meaning.
    - jacobolus 8y ago
      The Selfish Gene came out in the mid 1970s and was a big bestseller (probably in the millions of copies sold by now). Sure, a few other people adopted the term, but it was not in wide use. I would guess most of the people who talked about “memes” in the 90s had directly read Dawkins’s book.
      - 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bennesvig 8y ago
As someone who has made a lot of humorous memes professionally for brands, I agree that these aren't memes but are cute, funny pictures.
- echelon 8y ago
  Isn't that marketing? Memes seem to have a culture jamming aspect to them. I don't think brands would sit well with that.
  - Rjevski 8y ago
    It is marketing indeed, but brands want to believe they’re doing genuine memes when they’re really doing just spam.
deadmetheny 8y ago
Image macros are just called memes now. I don't like it either, but language evolves in ways we don't necessarily like and there's not a lot to be done about it.

mirimir 8y ago

> The spreading from person to person being the crucial part. People mailed them to each other.

sverige 8y ago

Well, there was no internet a hundred years ago. Nor photocopiers. But I'll bet these spread like wildfire from person to person back then, limited only by how willing the original viewer was to risk losing their copy to a family member or friend. And back then, family members and friends spent a lot more time together in close physical proximity. And now that they've been digitized, you can guarantee that at least one of us here is going to do our part to fulfill the original and best purpose of the internet, which is to share funny pictures of cats. These are extraordinary specimens!

tokai 8y ago

Both the word and the concept has become a meme. Nitpicking its "real" meaning is misunderstanding the meme.

bachmeier 8y ago

> a real meme is something more than just a funny picture. > The spreading from person to person being the crucial part. The article says: "They were called postcards, or souvenir cards, and mailing them to friends and relatives was immensely popular for sharing a gilded, snowy holiday scene or even a lolcat."

codetrotter 8y ago
I was being overly simplistic. I still think there is a difference between individually forwarding a funny picture to others, and what a meme is. In order to be a meme, I should have said that it needs to be adopted and adapted by a collective of people. A postcard sent by me to my friends with a cute cat is not a meme. An image macro that I make and share to a collective group of my friends and them making variations of it makes the image a meme.
- pixl97 8y ago
  >A postcard sent by me to my friends with a cute cat is not a meme. And when they send it to others, who send it to others, then it is a meme.
  - drdeca 8y ago
    I think only if some of them make modifications or variations on it. Or, at least, that should be required to make it a central example of the concept?
- egfx 8y ago
  is this a meme? http://qr.ae/TUGRIY http://qr.ae/TUGRIY
  - drdeca 8y ago
    Yeah, (Or perhaps an instance of one or more memes? But that would probably a definition and inconvenient to say, so I will say yes,) that image is a meme.
aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
>They were called postcards, or souvenir cards Wait! People nowadays don’t know what a postcard is?

kbutler 8y ago

> I don’t think they qualify as memes to be honest. For a lot of people “meme” is synonymous with just “funny picture” it seems, but a real meme is something more than just a funny picture. Agreed. > it needs to be adopted and adapted by I don't think you get to target your pedantism quite so tightly. A meme before about 2005 was "an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture" (m-w.com). The "image macro" meaning (meme-ing?) with adaptation is a very recent interpretation (lolcats and icanhazcheezburger?), and as you said above, "a lot of people" don't necessarily even think of "meme" that way.

jacobolus 8y ago
A “meme” before 2005 was a made-up word that only Richard Dawkins and a few other people ever used (a way of extending his discussion of self-replication in evolutionary biology to cultural phenomena), and many other people thought was a rather pointless synonym for “idea” or “concept” built on a flimsy analogy. Then people on the web decided they needed a word for “popular funny picture with lots of remixes”, and adopted that word (maybe as a joke?).
- cicero 8y ago
  I discovered the word "meme" on Usenet discussion groups back in 1992. It was a well-known idea in the Hacker News of that day, and was being applied to things that were being passed around on the Internet. However, since this was before the web had caught on, the memes were all textual. I was not surprised then when I saw the term used in its present, graphical meaning.
  - jacobolus 8y ago
    The Selfish Gene came out in the mid 1970s and was a big bestseller (probably in the millions of copies sold by now). Sure, a few other people adopted the term, but it was not in wide use. I would guess most of the people who talked about “memes” in the 90s had directly read Dawkins’s book.
    - 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

bennesvig 8y ago

As someone who has made a lot of humorous memes professionally for brands, I agree that these aren't memes but are cute, funny pictures.

echelon 8y ago
Isn't that marketing? Memes seem to have a culture jamming aspect to them. I don't think brands would sit well with that.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  It is marketing indeed, but brands want to believe they’re doing genuine memes when they’re really doing just spam.

deadmetheny 8y ago

Image macros are just called memes now. I don't like it either, but language evolves in ways we don't necessarily like and there's not a lot to be done about it.