Whose meme is it anyway ?

Nobody: 

Me on a Sunday:

About 70000 years back, there occurred a shift in the way a branch of primitive apes operated. They began to form societies, come together in larger numbers and climb up the food chain. These apes communicated with much more flexibility. These apes were our ancestors and we refer to them as Homo Sapiens. Throughout history, if there has been one thing which has proved to be our species' X-factor in a manner of saying, it's been our ability to transmit information through multiple portals, replicate it and transfer it with extreme flexibility. This unique ability gave birth to many an important phenomenon - religion, gossip, literature and others

This ability to transfer information is an evolutionary trait and is what accounts for man being a social animal. With the advent of the internet and rise in the complexity of our social constructs, there was an incessant flow of information both at our basic biological level (here our genes played the role of the harbinger of heredity)and at a higher level where multiple disciplines, cultures and professions were intermingling. 

Now the purpose of giving your this anthropogenic and genetic 101 was to introduce the topic at hand i.e the Meme. Yes, the same square photo which sometimes makes your chuckle and sometimes gets you in trouble  (political and bovine-related memes are particularly (in)famous for that). While it is true that memes are generally attributed to funny content on the internet and you rarely find serious looking people (often wearing a tie) browsing through memes but don't let that beguile you into assuming that memes are a manifestation of the inane and childish. Their origins are of as scientific a pedigree as your classical Darwinian concepts of evolution

The Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, first coined the term "Meme" in his seminal work (highly recommend it) "The Selfish Gene". Just like the gene, was a unit of biological information, Dawkins opined a meme was a unit of cultural information, a replicator. This meant that just like genes, the culture which makes the stronger memes gets propagated better and is more likely to survive. This concept is a precursor to the concept of soft power which we see nations pursuing doggedly today. (More people would know of America by Macdonalds rather than the Boston Tea Party) . Now when you view memetics (a more erudite name for meme game) as the study of information and idea, you realise from retrospective analyses of history that most of the monumental events of human life were conceived as a meme - a unit of information/idea. The more viral the meme became, the more pervasive that idea became and eventually gathered massive proportions so as to become a habit, myth and even organised religion. 

Cut to the 21st century, and the practical ambit of a meme has vastly outstripped its academic range. Today with the internet, social forums like Reddit, 4chan and even Instagram, memes have become a common mode of communication across the internet. They are a part of an inextricably interlinked web of self-referential texts and images, based upon the context (and sometimes place)of their creation and consumption. So much has their popularity piqued that they have become nearly a new form of social currency. While purists might scoff at these new digital contraptions, that's the way it is. For memes, politics, literature, social faux-pas, celebrities and sometimes even tragedies, nothing is off limits. While most of us limit ourselves to the funny memes, remember that whatever information you share on the internet it would, by all means, be encompassed within the academic meaning of the meme. 

Internet memes have gained tremendous traction given their huge reach and presence. Many psychologists on college review boards would often have a look at the social media profile to gauge the proclivities of a student. The content he consumes, the memes he shares all speak volumes about the potential candidate. So one must understand that when he shares a meme, he is in a way giving an insight about himself to the world. Memes are more serious business than you might think. Today more than ever, memes are leading to instant fame for celebrities, mass movements and petitions being signed by like-minded people around the world and of course making you smile. 

However, like any evolutionary yardstick, there are bound to be mutations and variations. Today just like humour, news and pop-culture, even xenophobia, sectarian ideas and racial violence are propagating as memes. Such memes provide a negative echo-chamber effect to the wrong sort of people, making them reinforce the divisive beliefs with more conviction. 

So enjoy
this tryst between millennials and memes while it lasts, for it is here to stay for some time. Meanwhile, understand and self curate the memes and content you consume conscientiously and make sure that the information which gets replicated and transferred through you into this web that is WWW, is not toxic and helps people in whatever little way it can. 

Till next time, keep reading, keep recommending and keep sharing for more the passengers on the paperback trail the better.