Ok, I respect your position even if I don’t agree with it.

Mainly because this definition is so broad, it becomes in my opinion worthless. Everything is a cultural artifact. The sharing of anything is therefore a spreading of culture. The Internet is strictly speaking the sharing of resources. Every. Single. Thing. Everything on the entire publically accessible internet is a meme. Every word out of your mouth is a meme. Anything you’ve ever done which has been observed by another is a meme.

At that point, it’s not interesting or IMO valuable as a conceptual tool.

I’m not telling you you’re wrong, just that your definition (in my opinion) steals a word which could have been a compelling descriptor and makes it less valuable.

By the original definition, it’s not enough to just copy it, it needs to have variations. Think “slaps roof of car” or “always has been”. Variant upon variant. Think how many meme variants that are essentially “I’ve found it, the scroll of truth”. They evolve, they spin off new lines. That’s the “evolution” part. It’s a word and concept buy a guy who made his whole career telling people who don’t believe or understand evolution they’re stupid.

Simply sharing something online doesn’t make it a meme by the original definition. You can call it one, I don’t care. At this point the semantic battle was fought and won like a decade ago: now a meme is fucking *anything" and the word has entirely shed any vestiges of its original meaning.

I’m just trying to explain the disconnect you and the other guy is having. You’re operating with two distinct definitions. Yours is the common contemporary definition, by which this is a meme.

Thiers is the original Dawkins definition, of which this absolutely 100% is not.

But, language is defined by usage, so I absolutely 100% agree that this is a meme by contemporary definition. So you’re right.

You have to get people hooked on your product, though.

If they and every other AI company just evaporated no one would really be bothered.

You can’t capitalize a market that doesn’t really exist.

The original concept was based heavily in the idea of copying something with variance. “Meme” and “Gene” rhyme, and you know, Dawkins… The analogue is that a meme is reproduced with variants that find success or failure in their ability to reproduce.

If something is a “one off” and isn’t generating (reproducing) variant copies for cultural spread, it’s not really behaving as the cultural analogue to a gene.

But that’s a historical definition. Language evolves, it’s kinda peak meme for “meme” to shed it’s original definition like a snake dropping its legs.

I found Area 51!!

That’s like saying the road is the cause of all car crashes.

The road is the context in which all (mostly all) crashes occur, its contours or grading maybe contributed to the crash, but it almost never would be the sole cause.

Most people who just wave their hands and say “patriarchy” are parrots who just know they get a cracker when they say the line. It’s resulted in trash discourse.

It’s resulted in people just tuning out when they hear the word, too.

Kinda sucks, because it’s a really useful foundation to talk about society through a certain lens. It’d be hard to talk about traffic if I didn’t understand what a road was.

But, I admit, many people who pipe up with “patriarchy” don’t really want to talk any farther, and that does make dealing with those people pretty frustrating. Like if a cop showed up at every crash and excitedly pointed out the existence of a road and then left.

No he didn’t.