this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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Microblog Memes
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A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
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Incorrect. I don’t think you’re aware that a meme is a word from theoretical science (memetics) where the meme is a unit of culture that can be transmitted from one mind to another.
An image capturing an individual’s statement is easily a meme. We’re all here talking about it and its shared perspectives and insights about the negative behavior of a large corporation.
Meme doesn’t mean “funny pictures”.
By Dawknin’s original definition (cultural) memes are ideas, behaviors, styles, or practices that spread within a culture by imitation (Greek mimema, meaning “imitated”) and carry symbolic meaning. Some examples would be the “Keep Calm And Carry On” posters during WW2, the concept of the “American Dream” or toasting with glasses.
However in this context we’re talking about internet memes which is not synonymous with cultural memes. An internet meme is a picture or video that is funny, ironic, or relateable.
This is not a cultural meme nor internet meme.
“is a cultural item (such as an idea, behavior, or style) that spreads across the internet primarily through social media… They are highly versatile in form and purpose, serving as tools for light entertainment, self-expression, social commentary, and even political discourse..”
The medium is the only major difference. This is certainly sociopolitical commentary.
The original concept was based heavily in the idea of copying something with variance. "Meme" and "Gene" rhyme, and you know, Dawkins... The analogue is that a meme is reproduced with variants that find success or failure in their ability to reproduce.
If something is a "one off" and isn't generating (reproducing) variant copies for cultural spread, it's not really behaving as the cultural analogue to a gene.
But that's a historical definition. Language evolves, it's kinda peak meme for "meme" to shed it's original definition like a snake dropping its legs.
And since this is a picture (a reproduction) of a text post to an entirely different social media platform, this meme is reproducing. I’ve seen it posted to several different communities since this post, and no doubt users of those communities will have copied the image, sent to their friends, reposted to Facebook, blah blah.
Indeed, it is a meme.
By the original definition, it's not enough to just copy it, it needs to have variations. Think "slaps roof of car" or "always has been". Variant upon variant. Think how many meme variants that are essentially "I've found it, the scroll of truth". They evolve, they spin off new lines. That's the "evolution" part. It's a word and concept buy a guy who made his whole career telling people who don't believe or understand evolution they're stupid.
Simply sharing something online doesn't make it a meme by the original definition. You can call it one, I don't care. At this point the semantic battle was fought and won like a decade ago: now a meme is fucking *anything" and the word has entirely shed any vestiges of its original meaning.
I'm just trying to explain the disconnect you and the other guy is having. You're operating with two distinct definitions. Yours is the common contemporary definition, by which this is a meme.
Thiers is the original Dawkins definition, of which this absolutely 100% is not.
But, language is defined by usage, so I absolutely 100% agree that this is a meme by contemporary definition. So you're right.
I still disagree. The variation with selective retention is the Twitter post being screenshotted rather than hyperlinked to i.e. the context, comments, likes, retweets, etc have been lost, the text retained, but instead mutated into pixels to be shared visually. Copied (the text), varied (into image), selected (context and source disregarded). The image has been shared across multiple different platforms, and is spreading as it is influencing cultural ideas and, potentially, behaviors. It has propagated through imitation and replication.
This is memetics at work. A screenshot of something shared to wider social circles is, much to many’s chagrin, a meme.
I understand the disconnect; the other commenter likely first encountered “memes” as entertaining images with text over them.
Ok, I respect your position even if I don't agree with it.
Mainly because this definition is so broad, it becomes in my opinion worthless. Everything is a cultural artifact. The sharing of anything is therefore a spreading of culture. The Internet is strictly speaking the sharing of resources. Every. Single. Thing. Everything on the entire publically accessible internet is a meme. Every word out of your mouth is a meme. Anything you've ever done which has been observed by another is a meme.
At that point, it's not interesting or IMO valuable as a conceptual tool.
I'm not telling you you're wrong, just that your definition (in my opinion) steals a word which could have been a compelling descriptor and makes it less valuable.
You’re not at all wrong and I think that’s one of the many reasons why memetics has been widely criticised. I think it had its place in the 70s while selfish replication / kin selection was being explored and popularized but I think it’s been widely discredited at this point.
I know I was arguing the definition of a term but I’m truth, I don’t personally subscribe to the overall theory (Dawkins did write the book almost half a century ago at this point!). The “meme” is a bit of pseudoscience to vaguely articulate the propagation and proliferation of ideas/culture.
You should check out The Social Conquest of Earth if you’ve not already. It doesn’t have a compelling descriptor but it does shine a light on how natural selection doesn’t take place at purely the gene level. In a sense, we shouldn’t focus on the unit of the meme but instead the mechanisms around it.
I’ve really appreciated this little debate; you’re clearly a bright person!
No, it is not only limited to pic or vid. It can also be a short phrase or even just simple shared reaction. When someone is "meme-ing", they are not solely sharing pics or vids. For instance, if I were to count out 69 of something, and someone were to say "nice", that is an example of a meme that has no associated pic or vid.
Pics and vids are among the most common forms of internet memes, but that does not mean they are the only forms.
Let's take a Rickroll. Is the actual Rick Astley video the meme? Not really, no. The meme is sending someone to that video when they're not expecting it. Here the meme is an activity, the fooling of your target with a link to the video. If I just post a link to the video without trying to fool you, like so:
https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ <---link to Rick Astley song
Have I done the meme? No, I haven't, despite the fact that I'm linking the "meme video". The meme is in the context.