• Kethal@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I am pretty sure you still fail to understand the difference between the original meaning of the word and the meaning that you are using. www.tfd.com/meme.

    By the original definition, no, it’s not a meme. By the definition that you appear to be using, an image that has been modified, then sure, it’s a meme.

    • Sunforged@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I think you’re getting really tunnel visioned on a single definition and not taking into account the context to which we are interacting, which is on the internet. An internet meme is not the same exact concept as what Dawkins originally was conveying when he coined the term meme. I’m not out here in academia so you’ll have to forgive my shorthand of internet meme to just meme. In my defense before all you meme Scholars got on my case, the internet was included in my thesis title. Are the card signatures memes in a generational sense? No, but yet here we are discussing them four decades later, so maybe?

      An internet meme has two defining characteristics in reproduction and intertextuality. Were they reproduced? Before today not to my knowledge, they could have been as I have demonstrated. However not every gene strain reproduces, are they less of a gene than others that do? If memes are the cultural analogues to genes then the capability to reproduce is what is needed. If the original image is a template then do his jokes count as a single reproduction? As for intertextuality well Mark did that by changing the context of the original image.

      Is it a meme now?