Memes

A meme is the sociological term for "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture", as defined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. Memes are the method by which social, political, or cultural practices are transferred. Proponents of memetics, the study of memes, argue that memes undergo selective pressure within societies and thus undergo competition and natural selection. Under memetics memes have similar properties and features to their evolutionary analogues, genes: variation in reproduction, mutations, competition, inheritance, and so forth. Because of the nature of how memes spread through communities, they are often referred to as viral phenomena.

Meme theory has been used to attempt to explain many human phenomena, including religion, architectural practices, ideological thought, teaching, memory and personality retention, and racism. However, critics of meme theory argue that memes have no physical representation the way genes do, and therefore there is no evidence that analysis based on memes is at all meaningful. In addition, there is also an argument that the idea of a meme is unnecessary, describing something that "concept" covers with less baggage or that the semiological "sign" covers in more detail.