Memetics

Memetic video In this critically analysis of the article of An anatomy of a YouTube meme by Limor Shifman. This essay is trying to convey in the article message of a wide-spread phenomenon of today YouTube memes. Shifman explain the content and creation of the video, “Defined as units of culture that spread from person to person by means of copying or imitation, memes were identified, discussed (and disputed) long before the digital era (Dawkins, 1976; Hull 1982). Each of the YouTube memes have be get enough likes of a global scale. Shifman thesis in the article was uncovering the attributes common to ‘memetic video’ (Shifman, 188)” . The origin of memes came about my Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene (1976). His book cultivated the…

author, Stephanie Vie, begins this article by describing a movement from 2013, when people on Facebook began changing their profile pictures to an image of an equal sign atop a red background. This was started by the Human Rights Campaign, who were advocating for marriage equality at the time. Vie states that the image was shared and liked by many people, and discusses the different reasons people did this. Many people did it to support marriage equality rights, and some used the image for…

here in the sense of civilization) can be regarded as transmitted by nongenetic means, especially through imitation. The term meme was first proposed by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene and comes from an association between gene and mimesis. Dawkins also points to a close kinship with the French word same. Memes were presented by Dawkins as replicators, comparable in this respect to genes, but responsible for the evolution of certain animal behaviors and cultures. Dawkins's definition is a…

imitation. Imitation is the special ability that distinguish us from animals. We have this special ability since we were infants. If we keep imitating, it is not a good thing indeed. As time goes by, we are not only copying others’ actions but also the same ideas like plagiarizing. The elementary education was the start of imitation. As a kid, we have no doubt about the knowledge our teachers taught us because we all knew this knowledge has been taught again and again. We all assume it is 100…

elicit is laughter. Memes make people laugh and that is their purpose, so surely something with a simple purpose wouldn’t have a complicated nature? Well that’s where Limor Shifman would have to disagree with you. She offers a novel definition of memes: digital content units with common characteristics, created with an awareness of each other, and circulated, imitated, and transformed via the internet by many users. In other words a digital piece of content that spreads quickly over various…

The internet has become a cult that worships eccentricity. Take, for example, the killing of Harambe, a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo. After a three-year-old boy got inside the gorilla’s enclosure, zoo officials decided to kill Harambe, fearing for the boy’s life. The controversial decision and odd news story has become the internet’s latest obsession. Through memes like chanting “Dicks out for Harambe,” saying “Harambe died for our sins,” and putting Harambe as a write-in candidate in the US…

Rao, Venkatesh. "Memes Are Not Popular Because They Are Meaningful." Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2018. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EZVELA053695431/OVIC?u=jack64631&xid=4ef99e7. Accessed 20 Feb. 2018. Originally published as "How Harambe Became the Perfect Meme," The Atlantic, 6 Sept. 2016. In this article “Memes Are Not Popular Because They Are Meaningful” Venkatesh Rao claims that memes are bad ever since the Harambe accident happened.…

Memes popping up in the internet’s social media feeds and blogs and becoming exceedingly prominent. Many of these so-called memes appear to be harmless and tend to generate various chuckles, although many of them can be considered offensive or even disturbing to some viewers. The word “meme” was first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1989 book The Selfish Gene, and his intentions included spreading an element of a culture or system of behavior that is to be passed from one individual to…

The exponential growth of social media has spurred the creation of a unique form of communication in today’s culture. What do I meme? The use of the Internet meme has served as a phenomenon that has changed the way people communicate and have had a notable influence on forms of cultural expression. Memes are defined as, “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from one person to another in a culture and often altered in a creative or humorous way (i.e. images, phrases, snapshots, gifs,…

In Susan Blackmore’s “Strange Creatures” she describes the concept of the “memes eye view”. She claims the “memes eye view” is what makes humans different from animals, meaning humans can imitate therefore must be different from animals. As a reader dwells more on the thought of the “memes eye view” they can relate it to life experiences and other works of literature. For example, the “memes eye view” can be seen very clearly in “Bumping into Mr.Ravioli” by Adam Gopnik. In Gopnik’s work he…