A meme is a concept, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. Memes act as units for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. They are a viral phenomenon that may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution.
In popular language, a meme may refer to an Internet meme, typically an image, that is remixed, copied, and circulated in a shared cultural experience online. The most popular memes are usually found on the internet and may be humorous images, videos, pieces of text, or GIFs that are spread across the internet, typically on social media, and often with slight variations. Memes can be created by anyone and can be about anything, from current events to mundane tasks to pop culture references.
Memes are often used as a form of social commentary and are successful when they resonate with a particular audience and capture a cultural moment or trend. They are widely known as conduits for cultural conversations and an opportunity to participate in internet trends. The word "meme" was introduced by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, "The Selfish Gene," and was originally analogous to a "phoneme" or a "morpheme".
