Meme/ Qu'est-ce que c'est?Not to be confused with the French word meaning "same", meme (pronounced "meem") derives from the Greek mimeme, something that is imitated. A meme can mean different things, but basically it's something that propagates and spreads, like a virus.

Should we be declaring a state of emergency?

Not yet - a meme is not an actual virus, but a unit of cultural information, such as a word, a piece of music, a fashion or a way of making pots, that is replicated via popular culture, passed along via repetition and imitation. It's not a meme until someone picks up on it and repeats it.

Like cultural Chinese whispers?

The word was coined by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Just as a gene propagates through reproduction, wrote Dawkins, a meme replicates itself by being passed from one mind to another. It's an evolutionary process, in which natural selection comes into play: some memes catch on and become established; others are consigned to the recycle bin of culture.

Sounds very scientific.

Memetics is a kind of science, all right. Memes are sort of the building blocks of cultural evolution, mutating, generating and spreading till they permeate the zeitgeist. When something "goes viral", it could be said to be a meme; so anything from Crazy Frog to the Hot Hot Heat video is a meme.

So meme is just another word to describe a fad or a craze?

That's about the size of it - and it's also the inherent flaw in the matrix. All knowledge that's passed from one person to another could be correctly described as memetic, so when everything from Father Ted's "feck" to the belief in life after death falls under the umbrella of a meme, you have to wonder if this isn't just another meaningless, self-propagating concept.

So, are we the meme generation?

Hardly. It would appear that, in a supreme paradox, memes themselves are not memes. The concept just hasn't caught on. You don't hear colleagues or friends talking excitedly about the new meme of the day. The only people who use the term are pretentious web-heads who want to sound knowledgeable about cultural trends. Google the word 'meme' and you'll be bombarded with reams of pseudo-intellectual twaddle.

Like this piece?

Er

Try at work:

Good news, boss, I think we've isolated the meme for "let's call in sick on Monday".

Try at home:

So I asked Betty, and she asked Mary, and Mary asked all the girls in her knitting group, but none of them have heard of a meme.