Memes- Art of engineering

In this era of speed, information is available at just a click away. The ICE age or the age of Information, Communication, and Entertainment are the three most important aspects of the internet today.

Memes are ideas formed from an analogy that spread from one person to another within a culture or through multi-culture. Meme is a word that is short for mimene(from uncertain or unknown; perhaps mimesis + -eme): both words created by Richard Dawkins ) in his book The Selfish Gene. In the book, he explains how information related to a particular culture spreads.

Dawkins is one of the world's most controversial atheists and an Ethologist. He was a biologist and a popular science writer who composed ideas on evolution based on genetic levels and believed that the gene was responsible for mutation and evolution, not the individual species . He claimed that the natural selection happens within the gene level rather than the individual level. In his book, his fundamental ideology is that we, humans are a selfish being striving for the survival of the fittest. He believes all humans are born selfish and that empathy and generosity must be taught in order to live an altruistic life. Dawkins was also a staunch misbeliever of religion and states that religion is the world's greatest evil.

In today's world, we are familiar with one type of memes; internet memes. They are a subset of the generalized meme concept. Internet memes may contain an image, video, hyperlink, website or hashtag. It can be a passage, a phrase or just a word with some form of intentional mistake or error to ignite satire. Dawkins believes that an "internet meme" is the hijacking of an original idea and instead of transforming by random change and gradual spreading by a form of Darwinian selection, they are modified intentionally by human creativity and imagination. Unlike genetics(and Dawkins' original meaning of "meme"), internet memes are deliberately altered.

A meme can also act as an atomic unit to carry a single idea, to create awareness of a symbol or cultural practices. In order to carry them from one mind to another, memes take forms through writing, speech, gestures, and satirical themes. The creators of the memes have one purpose in mind; for it to self-replicate and mutate through popular usage.

Memetics or the study of memes is a subject that explores the concept of memes from a theoretical model to an evolutionary model. This topic is a controversial study as it has brought on criticism from many literary fronts . Some people believe that there is a concrete way of identifying how the concept of memes spread while others believe that this is basically a waste of time.

Memes are like propaganda; it self advertises the ideology the creator wants it to. More than speaking the truth it reflects the opinion of the creator., When a meme is created and released to the world through the internet, in order for the meme to gain popularity, it needs to stay in the minds of the people. THe more the people see it, remember it, talk about it, the more its propagation is. There are two stages to a memetic life cycle: transmission and retention. Retention is very important for memes to be successful. Only the successful memes remain and spread, and the unfit ones are forgotten. The meme pool and Gene pool are very similar in this nature as only the best ones survive. This similarity to natural selection is what Richard Dawkins talked about in his book, The selfish gene. The life of the meme is determined by the usage; the longer it stays, the higher the chances of its generation .

Since the concept of truth is not the point of memes, memes can have a negative effect when used poorly. Memes as such are not good or bad. It all depends on the person creating and what type of message the creator wants to send out to the world. Memes are used in all corners of the society. For example, let’s look at Hiter. Hitler used hate propaganda and memes to turn an entire society against a single race. The concept of memes existed before it was given a proper name. Hitler's ideology spread like wildfire across Germany and created the effect he intended.

Memes can play a vital role in politics too. In recent times, during the 2016 presidential election, alt-right extremists and white supremacists were successfully able to weaponize memes and use it as meme-warfare. The internet is such a place where people can take on an alternate ego, enabling them to do things they would normally never do in real life. It normalized and popularized radical white nationalist messages and it helped them spread to all corners of the world.

Memes are often created nowadays to manipulate society into thinking a certain way. Many studies are conducted to determine how effective these memes truly were. A recent study examined over 160 million images from various social media sites such as Twitter, Reddit, Gab and Facebook and found that the most popular memes are the ones hinting racism not so subtly. These memes helped the alt-right spread their misinformation and hate speeches towards a wider platform. The more views it got, the wider it spread. It didn't matter whether people agreed on it, the mere act of opening and viewing the memes were enough to influence the society.

Social media is a portal for meme creators. They target their audience very carefully by understanding their psychology to hit the mark based on humor or sentiment. Since most people spend around 2 hours a day on the internet, society revolves around what we view online. Our next day conversations include what we saw online yesterday. Memes can range from text, pictures and videos. When the viewers relate to a meme, it instantly latches onto their memories and makes the viewer share it or repost it, doing their part to spread the propaganda. Each viewer now is part of the propaganda.







References:


1. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Dawkins

2. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-08/the-dangerous-delusions-of-richard-dawkins/

3. https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/27/17760170/memes-good-behavioral-science-nazi-pepe

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Dawkins

5. https://sproutsocial.com/glossary/meme/