>>4060
>I meant as in, internet people get male pronouns, and internet people are genderless blobs.<
self-contradictory
>I'm well aware that there's a secondary definition of "meme". But as I said in >>4057, in past exchanges you seemed against words changing meaning over time (I could search the post(s), but I'm too lazy). So I wouldn't have thought that you, of all people, would use the definition coined in the last few years over the "original" one (apparently coined 1976, as one can see in the source you posted).<
Either of them. The present imperfect aspect without a conditional means memes are neither a plan nor a goal; I could post memes incidentally but what I usually do is stop dissent.
>So do I, incidentially. If you're talking about the word gaining its secondary definition, that is. Its original one coming up was more or less inevitable, as everything gets a name sooner or later.<
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/239909
meme, n.
Etymology: Shortened < mimeme (see quot. 19761 at sense 1) < ancient Greek μίμημα that which is imitated ( < μιμεῖσθαι to imitate: see mimesis n.), after gene n.2
1. A cultural element or behavioural trait whose transmission and consequent persistence in a population, although occurring by non-genetic means (esp. imitation), is considered as analogous to the inheritance of a gene.
1976 R. Dawkins Selfish Gene xi. 206 The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun which conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme... It should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘cream’. Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.
2. An image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations. Also with modifying word, as Internet meme, etc.
1998 Sci. & Technol. Week (transcript of CNN TV programme) (Nexis) 24 Jan. The next thing you know, his friends have forwarded it [sc. an animation of a dancing baby] on and it's become a net meme.
"cultural element" = custom.
"behavioural trait" = habit.
{custom, habit} ⊂ tradition; if Dawkins had known the classics he should hav referred to the tradendum instead of the meme: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trado#Inflection.