Thread:User talk:WaitingforGodot/Crank linguistics/reply (25)

The internet is pretty much the only place where completely inelastic memes, which exchange in high-fidelity, exist. Cat pictures, quickmeme.com, viral campaigns and so on.

Elsewhere, I think there is something to be said about "here's an idea", let's watch it move. But only if you realise how malleable an idea "is". That makes a meme as a unit a little problematic because unlike a gene that might stay intact with little to no mutation from generation to generation, a memetic equivalent might get completely hacked apart by the receiver. Or it might not. It's that which makes the gene analogy fall apart because the odds of inheriting a gene from a parent aren't dependent on the gene itself or what you already have.