Meme

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The first intarwebz meme.

Richard Dawkins' famous book.

Meme is also an accomplished violinist.

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. In short, memes are just inside jokes for people who have no friends with whom to have real 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.

“	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

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

The Lifespan of a Meme

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

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

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 is put on Snorg Tees and Facebook bumper stickers.
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 throes 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.
The meme then must be tossed into the fires of Mount Doom by a rather unsuspecting hobbit for its evil to be banished.

There are also forced memes. The idea behind a forced meme is that if you repost 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:

Pronuncation

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)
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.