What Connects Margherita Pizza, Gangnam Style, and Grumpy Cat?
They’re all memes.
I thought I knew what a meme was until I knew what a meme was.
What? Yes, keep calm and carry on — this sentence is also a meme, by the way. It was coined during WWII by the British government to raise public morale.
Confusing? A bit, but this is because we’ve been using the word meme to describe funny videos and images, unaware of its broader meaning.
A meme is like a gene
The year was 1976, and Richard Dawkins was making a lot of noise with his landmark work, “The Selfish Gene”.
Shifting the focus from the individuals to the genes, Dawkins revolutionized how we looked at the theory of evolution. It was groundbreaking.
But the novelty did not stop there. With his book, Dawkins also coined a new term, the meme. According to him, while genes are life's building blocks, memes are culture's building blocks.
A song, a behavior, a story. These are all memes.
A meme is the smallest piece of culture with potential immortality.
And, like genes, memes fight against each other and try to replicate as much as possible. Oh, they mutate too.
Mamma Mia, what a delicious pizza!
When the son of God, Jesus, was among us, there was no pizza. Thank God (the father) now there is.
The accurate origins of the pizza as we know it today don’t really matter. What matters is that this meme — yes, the pizza — was created at some point in the past and spread like wildfire, taking the world by assault. Heck, even teenage mutant ninja turtles love pizza.
Of course, culture goes beyond food. Take for example the toast you make with your friends after opening the merlot wine that you’ll savour together with the pizza you just ordered. Such behavior is also part of our culture and, therefore, is also a meme. Cheers!
Mutations are crucial for the evolution of life and culture
A gene mutation that gives a competitive advantage to its bearer has a higher chance of being passed on. Say, a gene that yields a stronger tail to a fish will allow it to escape predators, for example. This fish will then have higher chances of mating and passing its genes on.
The same happens with memes. From time to time, a meme mutates, and that new snippet of culture will face the wilderness, thriving or perishing.
Let’s stick with the pizza example. Here in Brazil, I’ve witnessed two mutations of this successful meme: chicken with cream cheese pizza and — brace for impact — sushi pizza.
Fortunately, for the sake of our Italian ancestors, the sushi pizza perished and the chicken one thrived. To be clear: I still prefer the margherita, but I must admit the chicken pizza was a successful meme in Brazil.
Another meme that has suffered uncountable mutations is the “keep calm and carry on”. Some are doomed to oblivion, like “keep calm and recycle”, while others have a fair chance of replicating in our minds, like “keep calm and listen to The Beatles”. In case you know a “keep calm” mutation that has a more virulent potential, please share in the comments.
Pay attention and you’ll see memes fighting for survival everywhere
Last time I checked, Gangnam Style had more than five BILLION views and that silly movement with the hands will probably be incorporated into the meme pool forever.
What about a sport like soccer? Hands down a successful meme.
Now, a relatively new sport: beach tennis, a fever here in Brazil. Will it be around 10 years from now? Or will this meme, the offspring of beach volleyball and tennis, perish without leaving a trace? Make your bets.
And what about the Flat Earth theory? In the same way that genes combine to form complex organisms, memes combine to form complex (or downright stupid) ways of thinking. So the memes forming the Flat Earth school of thought (if I can say that) are fighting the memes forming the scientific method. If you’re reading this article I know you are smart enough to know that the Flat Earth memes, which were resurrected by some modern-day necromancers, are returning to their tombs to, I hope, never come back again.
Finally, memes can have more profound implications. An example is reincarnation, the belief that we live multiple lives. This meme is fighting against others, like the belief that we have just one life. Both are trying to replicate as much as they can in the minds of all human beings. Which one inhabits your mind? Which one tries to replicate when you talk about death?
The bottom line
The funny internet memes, like the grumpy cat, are just a small fraction of the meme universe, which, in the end, comprise the building blocks of our multiple cultures.
In the same way that life evolves through genes mutating and fighting against each other, culture evolves through memes doing exactly the same thing.
Take the memes that justified slavery. Just like the dinosaurs, they are now extinct, fortunately. How could one believe that a human being could be treated as a working horse? Crazy, isn’t it? Thank God we evolved. Thank God those memes were replaced by those who foster the belief that no human can be treated as an animal. Let’s celebrate.
But —
Let’s not forget there is still work to do. After all, just to give an example, racism still exists. And the “ideology” of racism, if I can say that, is comprised of many memes, which you and I must exterminate once and for all.
How? Disseminating more evolved memes, which will replicate in everyone’s minds, wiping out the racist memes once and for all.
I’ll start: “In the end, we all bleed red”.
