Richard Dawkins, who coined the word 'meme' back in 1976, has himself become a meme thanks to his contribution. Of course, back then, Dawkins wasn’t referring to cats that “can haz cheeseburgers” or dogs claiming they’re “fine” in a house that’s burning down around them, but rather was talking about culture and memes were, as he put it, “cultural units of information".įittingly, thanks to his invention of the word, Dawkins went on to become a meme himself in a meta move he thankfully seems to find amusing. Coined by British evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene, Dawkins, when searching for a word to describe the concept of the transmission of an idea, blended the Greek word "mimeme" – meaning something that is imitated – with gene. The term "meme" was first used back in 1976. Courtesy KC Green ‘Cultural units of information’ The 'It's fine' dog meme is used to communicate situations that aren't at all fine, and came from part of a comic strip created by artist KC Green. And memes have emerged as one of those ways.
Instead, the internet's democratisation of information, as well as who can access that information and when, has created an infinite number of ways in which we unify and relate to one another in a digitised world. But these days, with the dissemination of content across too many platforms to count, it's unlikely the world will ever collectively come together in the same way to witness history in the making. Pre-world wide web, it used to be global events that united us, such as the 650 million people who watched the 1969 Moon landing, or the 750 million who came together to watch Prince Charles and Diana's 1981 wedding.
Memes – pronounced meems, not me-mes, because you’d be surprised how many people still don’t know that – are one of those global cultural touchstones that have become synonymous with the internet.
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