Technical jargon: What does "meme" mean?

They keep you from working, are inserted into PowerPoint presentations or spread via social media and email: memes. Images with text overlays that are combined to make them look as ugly as possible, but funny, e.g. LOL Cats. Internet services such as Reddit, 9GAG, Tumblr or Watson are veritable treasure troves for such memes, but what does this word actually mean? In the singular, meme is actually an artificial word that etymologically found its way onto our mobiles and computers from the Greek "mime" (play), the Latin "memor" (to remember) and the English "gene" (gene). However, the fun memes of today are actually a manifestation of a much broader theory.

Chance decides what is good

Richard Dawkins launched the concept of evolutionary biology back in 1976 in his popular science book "The Selfish Gene". Memes, understood as individual contents of consciousness, could therefore be passed on and reproduced at will and are socio-culturally what genes are biologically: heritable. Memes are simply faster. They don't take 15 to 30 years to be passed on naturally between people, but just seconds, thus impressively demonstrating the theory of evolution in fast motion. And they also show that socio-cultural evolution is primarily determined by chance and not - as experts in the industry like to sell it - predictable. Which brings us back to the Internet phenomena to which memes belong: They spread rapidly and evolutionarily from something existing, spread in x variations by y viewers as being so worthy of reproduction that they win the race for attention and end up on our mobiles or computers to disrupt our work. No matter how good or bad they are. *Benno Maggi is co-founder and CEO of Partner & Partner. He created the section "Vom Fach" in the NZZ FOLIO and was in charge of it for years. He presents and decodes words and terms that can be used either for small talk, being important, getting excited, playing Scrabble or simply for fun.