Proselytic: ideas generally passed to others beyond one's own children. Ideas that encourage the proselytism of a meme, as seen in many religious or political movements, can replicate memes horizontally through a given generation, spreading more rapidly than parent-to-child meme-transmissions do. For instance, the possibility that ideas were subject to the same pressures of evolution as were biological attributes was discussed in the time of Charles Darwin. T. H. Huxley (1880) claimed that "The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals." [25] Often, memes go through small alterations like the game of telephone. Sometimes, memes even beget new memes. What's fascinating is that the nature of online memes means we can trace their origins, evolution, and changes in popularity.

Lankshear, Colin; Knobel, Michele (2019). "Memes, Macros, Meaning, and Menace: Some Trends in Internet Memes". The Journal of Communication and Media Studies. 4 (4): 43–57. doi: 10.18848/2470-9247/CGP/v04i04/43-57. ISSN 2470-9247. S2CID 214369629. Archived from the original on 4 January 2023 . Retrieved 11 January 2023. Balkin, J. M. (1998). Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300072884. Benítez-Bribiesca, Luis (January 2001). "MEMETICS: A DANGEROUS IDEA". Interciencia. 26 (1). ProQuest 210137265– via Research Library. meme noun". Oxford Learner's Dictionaries. 2019. Archived from the original on 20 May 2019 . Retrieved 30 December 2017. Memes, analogously to genes, vary in their aptitude to replicate; successful memes remain and spread, whereas unfit ones stall and are forgotten. Thus, memes that prove more effective at replicating and surviving are selected in the meme pool. [ citation needed]

Aunger, Robert (2000). Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192632449.

Dawkins, Richard (2004). A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love. Boston: Mariner Books. p.263. ISBN 9780618485390. Memes reproduce by copying from a nervous system to another one, either by communication or imitation. Imitation often involves the copying of an observed behavior of another individual. Communication may be direct or indirect, where memes transmit from one individual to another through a copy recorded in an inanimate source, such as a book or a musical score. Adam McNamara has suggested that memes can be thereby classified as either internal or external memes (i-memes or e-memes). [11] Yes! Animated meme templates will show up when you search in the Meme Generator above (try "party parrot"). Dawkins, Richard (2015). "Memes". Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science. London: Bantam Press / Transworld Publishers. pp.404–408. ISBN 9780593072561.Memetics is the name of the field of science that studies memes and their evolution and culture spread. [51] While the term "meme" appeared in various forms in German and Austrian texts near the turn of the 20th century, Dawkin's unrelated use of the term in The Selfish Gene marked its emergence into mainstream study. Based on the Dawkin's framing of a meme as a cultural analogue to a gene, meme theory originated as an attempt to apply biological evolutionary principles to cultural information transfer and cultural evolution. [52] Thus, memetics attempts to apply conventional scientific methods (such as those used in population genetics and epidemiology) to explain existing patterns and transmission of cultural ideas. [53] Post, Stephen Garrard; Underwood, Lynn G.; Schloss, Jeffrey P.; Hurlbut, Willam B. (2002). Altruism & Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy, & Religion in Dialogue. Oxford University Press. p.500. ISBN 9780195143584. It's a free online image maker that lets you add custom resizable text, images, and much more to templates. Hull, David L. (2001). "Taking memetics seriously: Memetics will be what we make it". In Aunger, Robert (ed.). Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science (1sted.). Oxford University Press. pp.43–67. ISBN 9780192632449. Memes got a little morbid in 2020. The Ghanaian pallbearers became one of the year’s most recognizable and defining ones; footage (from the BBC in 2017) of the dapper group dancing while carrying a coffin — set to Russian techno song “Astronomia” — was juxtaposed with moments where people seemed to be flirting with death.

In his book The Robot's Rebellion, Keith Stanovich uses the memes and memeplex concepts to describe a program of cognitive reform that he refers to as a "rebellion". Specifically, Stanovich argues that the use of memes as a descriptor for cultural units is beneficial because it serves to emphasize transmission and acquisition properties that parallel the study of epidemiology. These properties make salient the sometimes parasitic nature of acquired memes, and as a result individuals should be motivated to reflectively acquire memes using what he calls a " Neurathian bootstrap" process. [65] Memetic explanations of racism Kapwing is a powerful online editor that you can use to create memes from images, GIFs, and videos online. It's one of the web's most popular meme makers and is the first meme generator to support videos. Join thousands of meme makers who use Kapwing every day. Petrova, Yulia (2021). "Meme language, its impact on digital culture and collective thinking". E3S Web of Conferences. 273: 11026. Bibcode: 2021E3SWC.27311026P. doi: 10.1051/e3sconf/202127311026. ISSN 2267-1242. S2CID 237986424. Nahon, Karine; Hemsley, Jeff (2013). Going viral. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. ISBN 9780745671284. OCLC 849213692. Archived from the original on 17 March 2023 . Retrieved 23 January 2023. R. Evers, John. "A justification of societal altruism according to the memetic application of Hamilton's rule". Archived from the original on 6 October 2018 . Retrieved 26 July 2013.

Kull, Kalevi (2000). "Copy versus translate, meme versus sign: Development of Biological Textuality". European Journal for Semiotic Studies. 12 (1): 101–120. Archived from the original on 23 January 2023 . Retrieved 23 January 2023.