The Selfish Meme: A Critical Reassessment

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Shifman, Limor (26 March 2013). "Memes in a Digital World: Reconciling with a Conceptual Troublemaker". Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 18 (3): 362–377. doi: 10.1111/jcc4.12013. Fracchia, Joseph; Lewontin, Richard (February 2005). "The price of metaphor". History and Theory. 44 (1): 14–29. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2005.00305.x. ISSN 0018-2656. JSTOR 3590779. The selectionist paradigm requires the reduction of society and culture to inheritance systems that consist of randomly varying, individual units, some of which are selected, and some not; and with society and culture thus reduced to inheritance systems, history can be reduced to 'evolution.' ... We conclude that while historical phenomena can always be modeled selectionistically, selectionist explanations do no work, nor do they contribute anything new except a misleading vocabulary that anesthetizes history.

A decade into the future, and hiphop has thrown its code indiscriminately into the meme pool—it is immanent, endemic, ubiquitous.

Memes

The particular meme discussed in the interview is believed my many to be the first meme, in the modern sense of the word. But it's interesting to note that, as with most other instances of the word in use for years to come, the example was seen as simply an iteration of the existing meaning. Deacon, Terrence. "The trouble with memes (and what to do about it)". The Semiotic Review of Books. 10: 3. Aunger, Robert (2002). The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think. New York: Free Press. ISBN 9780743201506.

a b c Dawkins 1989, p. 192 "We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'." Selfishness is a trait that can have a significant impact on our personal and professional relationships.Motivational: ideas that people adopt because they perceive some self-interest in adopting them. Strictly speaking, motivationally transmitted memes do not self-propagate, but this mode of transmission often occurs in association with memes self-replicated in the efficiency parental, proselytic and preservational modes. Boyd, R. and Richerson, P. 2005. The Origin and Evolution of Cultures . Oxford University Press, Oxford. Shalizi, Cosma Rohilla. "Memes". Center for the Study of Complex Systems. University of Michigan. Archived from the original on 11 June 2012 . Retrieved 8 October 2021.