Here begins: my toot-serial snap shots of writing my thesis.
#amwriting #thesis
This may be a non-native English thing, but meme, is a word I did not learn until I understood the internet, and as we use memes here.
Which makes it hilarious for me to read about in the literary theory books, as it refers to the original definition:
"an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means."
@maloki I think most native English speakers discovered the word meme through the Internet definition. Before that it was an obscure term coined by Richard Dawkins and never permeated the popular vernacular with it's intended definition. I think any lexicographer worth their salt would list the internet version as the primary definition.
as a second opinion, the word 'meme' definitely had a life on the internet before it came into it's common, more specific, usage. The words "memetic hazard" are littered all over old creepypasta, for example.
One is ABSOLUTELY a subset of the other though, which is why I would list the "element of culture" definition first. meme(2) is just a specific expression of meme(1) that has the most obvious viral properties of any piece of internet culture.
@maloki @Sweet_Tango_Chill I once worked with some people who did the OPPOSITE, in that they would use the word meme to mean basically *anything*, the way people often use "thing" or "stuff", and it was a pretty gr8 meme.