A meme is a unit of cultural information — a pattern, idea, behavior, or style — that spreads from one mind to another within a culture through imitation and communication. The parameters of a meme include: (1) a replicable content (a tune, a phrase, a fashion, a belief), (2) a transmission vector (speech, writing, media, observation), and (3) a retention mechanism (memory, recording, ritual). Memes persist through the substrate of language and human teaching — without these, they cannot replicate. The concept carves a class of culturally transmitted units distinguished by their replicative behavior rather than their content. [formal: meme | substrate: mind | horizon: generations | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
meme
A meme is a unit of cultural information — a pattern, idea, behavior, or style — that spreads from one mind to another within a culture through imitation and communication. The parameters of a meme include: (1) a replicable content (a tune…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A meme is a human-made concept for a unit of cultural information — a pattern, idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture through imitation and communication. The concept itself was coined by Richard Dawkins in 'The Selfish Gene' (1976) as a framework for understanding cultural evolution. It is made by human cognition and language, designed to persist across minds through replication.
Names and aliases
- memeen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrf51qwi005rcqqtmpyziy84DEPENDS_ON →
Meme as a unit of cultural transmission depends on memory constitutively — memes persist only through human memory. Without memory as substrate, no meme can exist or propagate.
- cmrc6dopv00jba9g4op1ivbb1SERVES →
A meme is a unit of cultural transmission — its entire function is to propagate ideas, jokes, and concepts through communicative channels. Without communication, memes have no mechanism to replicate or spread. The note pins SERVES in the sense of 'for whose sake?' — memes exist as carriers of cultural content, serving the communication process by making ideas sticky and transmissible.
- cmrc6dopv00jba9g4op1ivbb1DEPENDS_ON →
meme DEPENDS_ON communication: removal test — remove communication and memes cannot replicate or spread. The operational mechanism of a meme is communicative transmission; without it, the meme has no means of propagation. Object-level operational need, not meta-level sayability.
Relations to this entry
No accepted relations in this direction.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 19, 2026, 1:10 AM UTC
- Content hash
- 95fdb3507c8d32a7e98788ac1882085567fcc20ad41564d36b162316aceae55b