Meme

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The first intarwebz meme.

Richard Dawkins' famous book.

The word 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.

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. Then most often memes are taken by fucking idiots and totally fucked up and or overused which eventually leads to the death of a meme, but here is an example of the lifespan of a meme.

“	Throughout more than 90% of its history, Homo sapiens 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

Memes and 4chan

Contrary to popular belief, many well known internet memes did not stem from the cesspot of fail that is 4chan. The same holds vice versa, i.e. many memes created on 4chan do not end up spreading like wildfire throughout the internet, and simply stay there. Many people are familiar with the well known O RLY owl, yet not many people are aware of the spamtastic DESU DESU.

TL;DR 4chan is not a meme factory, you fucking fuckshit.

The Lifespan of a Meme

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

Cutting the life short.

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

Getting mathematical.

A meme is born.
The meme becomes popular local to its origin.
Compounded overuse causes the meme to be burned into collective memory and distributed across the internet.
The meme reaches the bottom of the internet.
In some cases the meme has gone even lower and surfaced IRL.
Those that gave birth to the meme are filled with regret.
The meme lives on, spreading, and becoming moar and moar dumbed down for a mass audience, so that over time it bears little or no resemblance to the original.
The meme then must be tossed into the fires of Mount Doom by a rather unsuspecting hobbit for its evil to be banished.
Three to five years later it spontaneously resurfaces, makes its way to uncyclopedia, slashdot 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 throws of an internet meme's slow and painful death its 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. Goodnight sweet prince !!!11!121111eleven
The meme is put on Snorg Tees and Facebook bumper stickers.

However there are memes that deviate from this, and they usually move on to developing a personality. A couple examples of this ~~are Caturday, where everyone posts cat macros on Saturday morning, and Pedobear, who surfaces once the scent of loli is in the air.~~ WRONG: Lolcats and Pedofox prove that there is no win without fail.

There are also forced memes. Forced memes are an odd occurrence and rarely succeed in becoming a real meme. Take Milhouse for example. Milhouse has been forced down the internet's throat hole so hard and so much that the act of saying that Milhouse is a meme, has in itself become a meme.

Crappy, fast fading memes happen everyday, examples include:

Pronuncation

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)
And any additional combinations 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, get off your lazy ass and just fucking Google it, loser.