One notable pre-Internet meme would be the “Kilroy Was Here” which became popular during the Second World War. If we are to take the broad meaning of the word meme, then memes would have existed even long before the term was coined. In the early days of the Internet, memes spread via email, message boards, and newsgroups. But the word still retained its core meaning – an idea that is imitated and replicated. When we say meme now, we usually refer to amusing captioned images or videos that spread widely online via social media. The word meme caught on in the mid-’90s when the Internet became more widespread and exploded further with the popularity of social media.
Originally, Dawkins described meme as “a unit of cultural transmission” or “a unit of imitation” which may include “tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches”.ĭawkins further explains: “Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.” It came from the Greek word mimema which means that which is imitated. The term meme was introduced by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, in 1976 in his work The Selfish Gene.
What is a Meme? And Why is it Called That?
