20 min
Audio, Evolution, and Memes: Why TikTok Is The First YouTube Challenger Audio-First
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- Technology
Quick FYI for folks new to Audio-First:
* Read and/or listen - the audio version is great & has bonus clips
* Audio is also available on all the podcast apps
* The Audio-First Charter (why we’re here)
* Finally, this post may be easier to read on my blog
___________________
“Who controls the memes controls the universe” tweeted Elon Musk, referencing a line from Dune. Somehow it feels both trollish and profound.
If you live on the internet, you know it when you see it. Memes are everywhere. More importantly, it feels like memes matter today. A well-crafted internet joke like Musk’s can yield more attention than a well-funded PR campaign.
Lately, I’ve been reading a fascinating book on the topic. First, I learned the academic definition of memes is far more expansive than just internet jokes. Richard Dawkins coined the term meme to refer to fashions, ceremonies, customs, and technologies that spread across human brains. The mechanism: mimesis, better known as imitation.
[Dawkins] discussed [meme] propagation by jumping from brain to brain, likened them to parasites infecting a host, treated them as physically realised living structures, and showed how mutually assisting memes will gang together in groups just as genes do. Most importantly, he treated the meme as a replicator in its own right. Everything you have learned by imitation from someone else is a meme. But we must be clear what is meant by the word ‘imitation’, because our whole understanding of memetics depends on it. Dawkins said that memes jump from ‘brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation’ (1976, p. 192)…
Everything that is passed from person to person in this way is a meme. This includes all the words in your vocabulary, the stories you know, the skills and habits you have picked up from others and the games you like to play. It includes the songs you sing and the rules you obey. So, for example, whenever you drive on the left (or the right!), eat curry with lager or pizza and coke, whistle the theme tune from ‘Neighbours’ or even shake hands, you are dealing in memes. Each of these memes has evolved in its own unique way with its own history, but each of them is using your behaviour to get itself copied.
Susan Blackmore “The Meme Machine”
Think of memes as the smallest atomic unit of culture. Some memes are funny, some are relatable, and some are not very useful and don’t spread widely.
Memetic theory says these mind-viruses compete against each other for their slot in the next human brain. Some memes make it. Others don’t. (Even more interestingly, some memes make it without regard to their real-world usefulness—only their ability to replicate most effectively.) Memes, they argue, are part of a Darwinian system. This is all rooted in the idea of Universal Darwinism, which says evolution applies to any “replicator” with the following conditions:
* selection – the fittest survive
* variation – there are slight changes between copies
* heredity – the offspring inherits characteristics from the parent
Memes satisfy these conditions and replicate “cultural instructions” just like genes do.
Of course, our lives are increasingly digital. Arguably, more culture is mediated through media and tech platforms than in real life. Thinkers like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett were talking about cultural evolution and the theory of mind abstractly more than, say, lip-syncing TikToks. Even so, types of social media posts—as digital shipping containers for memes—help them propagate.
To social media’s credit, they’ve taken the Darwin-governed world of memes and built fairly Darwinian systems around them. Now, a retweet button here or a like button there governs how memes spread (or struggle for life). Digital memes satisfy all the evolutionary pre-conditions:
* selection – some posts get comments & likes, going viral and becoming part of public awareness
* varia
Quick FYI for folks new to Audio-First:
* Read and/or listen - the audio version is great & has bonus clips
* Audio is also available on all the podcast apps
* The Audio-First Charter (why we’re here)
* Finally, this post may be easier to read on my blog
___________________
“Who controls the memes controls the universe” tweeted Elon Musk, referencing a line from Dune. Somehow it feels both trollish and profound.
If you live on the internet, you know it when you see it. Memes are everywhere. More importantly, it feels like memes matter today. A well-crafted internet joke like Musk’s can yield more attention than a well-funded PR campaign.
Lately, I’ve been reading a fascinating book on the topic. First, I learned the academic definition of memes is far more expansive than just internet jokes. Richard Dawkins coined the term meme to refer to fashions, ceremonies, customs, and technologies that spread across human brains. The mechanism: mimesis, better known as imitation.
[Dawkins] discussed [meme] propagation by jumping from brain to brain, likened them to parasites infecting a host, treated them as physically realised living structures, and showed how mutually assisting memes will gang together in groups just as genes do. Most importantly, he treated the meme as a replicator in its own right. Everything you have learned by imitation from someone else is a meme. But we must be clear what is meant by the word ‘imitation’, because our whole understanding of memetics depends on it. Dawkins said that memes jump from ‘brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation’ (1976, p. 192)…
Everything that is passed from person to person in this way is a meme. This includes all the words in your vocabulary, the stories you know, the skills and habits you have picked up from others and the games you like to play. It includes the songs you sing and the rules you obey. So, for example, whenever you drive on the left (or the right!), eat curry with lager or pizza and coke, whistle the theme tune from ‘Neighbours’ or even shake hands, you are dealing in memes. Each of these memes has evolved in its own unique way with its own history, but each of them is using your behaviour to get itself copied.
Susan Blackmore “The Meme Machine”
Think of memes as the smallest atomic unit of culture. Some memes are funny, some are relatable, and some are not very useful and don’t spread widely.
Memetic theory says these mind-viruses compete against each other for their slot in the next human brain. Some memes make it. Others don’t. (Even more interestingly, some memes make it without regard to their real-world usefulness—only their ability to replicate most effectively.) Memes, they argue, are part of a Darwinian system. This is all rooted in the idea of Universal Darwinism, which says evolution applies to any “replicator” with the following conditions:
* selection – the fittest survive
* variation – there are slight changes between copies
* heredity – the offspring inherits characteristics from the parent
Memes satisfy these conditions and replicate “cultural instructions” just like genes do.
Of course, our lives are increasingly digital. Arguably, more culture is mediated through media and tech platforms than in real life. Thinkers like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett were talking about cultural evolution and the theory of mind abstractly more than, say, lip-syncing TikToks. Even so, types of social media posts—as digital shipping containers for memes—help them propagate.
To social media’s credit, they’ve taken the Darwin-governed world of memes and built fairly Darwinian systems around them. Now, a retweet button here or a like button there governs how memes spread (or struggle for life). Digital memes satisfy all the evolutionary pre-conditions:
* selection – some posts get comments & likes, going viral and becoming part of public awareness
* varia
20 min