alt title(s): Meme
Ladies and gentlemen, we have... An Internet Meme!
John Hodgman: [Packets like these (simulated with envelopes passed between John and Jon, with
"I'm a PC" reference)] could be anything on the internet. Spam, videos of lonely teens practicing with their lightsabers, comical reimaginings of movie premises —
Brokeback Mountain, for example, cats dressed as nuns eating from dishes of gravy...
Jon Stewart: Or maybe even useful information, or news analysis.
John Hodgman: Well, I guess. In fact...
(he passes another envelope to Jon Stewart)...these are all
Chuck Norris jokes.
Sociologists notwithstanding, on the Internet, a "meme" (pronounced "meem"
* Though if you believe the denizens of some other parts of the internet it's "mem," or "mee-mee" or "meh-may". Dictionary says it's "meem." ) is usually described as a catchy derivative of some aspect of pop culture,
parodied and repeated to the point that its origins and original meaning become muddled and completely mutilated beyond any point of recognition or humor. This is when you must
kill it with fire.
Fandom being what it is, this also applies to characters. Occasionally they are based on in-jokes relating to production or voice actor similarities, but the Internet is liable to spread a "meme" version of a character which is totally (sometimes deliberately) at odds with the original depiction, such as a cheerful version of a dark or scary character, a sexy version of a character featured in a
Jekyll And Hyde episode, or
softening a depressed one into a simply unlucky character. However, this is different from
outright decay since the fandom does it out of fun, not
willful ignorance. Indeed, a character who is subject to memes simply shows that the fandom finds them memorable and catchy, even if they
only showed up for a fraction of the time compared to other characters. This becomes especially potent for productions that leave the mainstream market relatively quickly.
Another quirk of memes depends on where they're initially propagated. Memes often spread regardless of content, taste, or sensibilities, while the original source may be the only ones who know enough about the source material to use it ironically. As well, some memes reference something common, but become catchy enough to be
associated with only a single new thing.
Depending on how strongly the production company is tied with fandom, sometimes a meme can escape the internet and get referenced in the medium it parodied through
omake or
Popularity Power. When this is the case you get an
Ascended Meme. Some forgotten or discredited memes are even resurrected thanks to the
Popularity Polynomial.
Note that while this article refers to internet-based memes, the phenomenon is not just limited to the internet. It can be
Sein Language which is that unique blend of terms you and your friends use, or a simple
catch phrase that is repeated over
a nine thousand times. However, certain memes are only popular to a certain group, like
4chan, where Mudkips, and a whole muddle of memes that first crawled their way out of the tar-like cesspool there.
If you'd like to keep up with the memes of the day, go to
Know Your Meme, or
Encyclopaedia Dramatica, if you don't mind that it's
Not Safe For Work.
The LURKMORE Wiki
is also a suprisingly rational resource for the memes themselves and the enigmatic culture around them. On the other hand, if you just want to learn who starts many of these, see
Fountain Of Memes. These are probably the most common source of
Surreal Humor.
Surprisingly, the
Trope Namer (for the word
meme) is
Richard Dawkins, who suggested that cultural information is inherited and reproduced, ocasionally with minor mutations, in a similar way to
genetic information.
Sub-tropes and specific variants (add new examples to those pages, not here):
Memes by Media
Specific Types of Memes
