Of Memes and Memetics

I keep noticing the reoccurrence of the terms "meme" and "memetics" in popular discourse these days. The terms have apparently acquired cachet, even in academic circles, in disciplines like art criticism and cultural anthropology. Despite that, I'm underwhelmed with the concept of the "meme." It's all too often bandied about as jargon, simultaneously ill-defined and weighted with portentuous profundity.


Well, I think I've finally figured out what a "meme" is.

Packaging. A matter of textual "image" that's particularly catchy.

"Meme theory" is about catchiness. Style, independent of content.

Call it another branch of language. So you have grammar, syntax, semantics, and style/memetic ability.

To some extent, the "meme" thing has always been present in text, as a subset of "style." Memes are more about titles of books than their contents, more about headlines than the body of the story. Slogans are memes. Signature punch lines of comedians are "inside joke" memes, playing to the shared "cultural knowledge" of a given audience. So are the comments provided by various pundits that achieve the status of well-known aphorisms.

"Memes" are often featured prominently in political campaigns- and political initiatives of all sorts.

"Operation Iraqi Freedom."

"Leave No Child Behind."

"Department of Homeland Security."

I can accept it, as far as it goes...okay, I just made up a few "memes" a while back. Like this one:

"the Iraq Hostage Situation"

and (caution: academic jargon meme) "Inertial Functionalism"...actually I made that one up years ago, about the time I got my B.A. in Cultural Anthropology.

In some ways, I find photographs to have even more "memetic power" than words. But even words are subject to image manipulation these days, what with easy resort to visual aids like italics and bold print.

When the auditory realm gets considered, text also has memetic "connotations." False cognates, onomatopoetic value, and homonyms among them.

I think the important thing to realize is that memetics relies on compact and easily transmissible images, rather than content and context. It's an imagic concept, not a lexical one. (Italics tend to send an "auditory image"- asense of voice, of accent.) It might help tip the balance of a given prose essay from "boring" to "engaging", but simple memetic power (or even MEMETIC POWER) exists independently of the message itself. Therefore, I think it's more important to learn the antidote to "meme power" than it does to exalt its worth. It's fine, up to a point. But flair with sloganeering- or HTML- doesn't replace a well-reasoned argument.

And there are places where "memetics" is as a rule simply out of place and inappropriate. For investigative news reportage, for instance, memetics is prone to get in the way. At best, using memes can make for a catchy headline- but it can also make for a misleading one. It's been known to be the case that content and context get sacrificed for the dubious power of a more easily transmissible meme. I've been known to do it myself...

Considering that headlines are inevitable, I suppose it's important to grasp some practical and applies memetic style. But it's also important to have the meme convey its "information condensate" as substantially accurate.