What the heck is a "Meme"?

Yes, I use the word "meme" and got email asking for a definition.

If you're sophisticated enough to read a blog, you should know this word.

A meme is a self-replicating piece of information (it rhymes with gene) that can include slogans, cultural sub-contexts and folklore. Gossip is a form of meme, but so is religious and political verbal iconography. Slogans are memes, as are any idea that replicates.

Memes are often trivial (as with the "tramp stamp") but sometimes profound agents of cultural change. Nothing is more powerful than a well-delivered idea, worded in such a way as to catch the imagination of the listener, and therefore likely to be replicated through repitition.

Yes, poetry was and is a form of memetic communication (the study of memes is memetics, the person who studies memes is a memeticist). The origin of poetry, you should know, was the development of patterned word arrangement to make memorization and recitation easier so that, in the absence of written language, detailed information could be passed down.

"The Romantic Poet of the Internet" is a meme (my meme) and "The City of Legends"...as is/are (sui generis):

Jokes ("Two Windows users walk into a bar..."
Proverbs ("A fool and his money are soon parted")
Fashion ("blue jeans" "miniskirts" "thongs")
Racism and sterotypes (insert politically incorrect phrase here...but "politically correct/incorrect" are also memes)
Advertising slogans ("I am stuck on Band-Aids" "She'll get there faster with Climatique")
Technology concepts (everything from a "personal computer" to a "kitchen match")

You can argue that Paris Hilton as an archetype is a meme. The same with Marcus Vick, Bill Clinton, Charles Manson and Mother Theresa.

Just about any piece of information small enough to carry its own ideas, but communicated from one to many, or one to one, is a meme.

Memes, like genes, do mutate and evolve, and often have a life-span, based on the success of the replication...too little, it fades quickly; too much, mutant varieties eventually overtake it and pervert it.

Love is the ultimate meme, by the way.