Meme

A term that first appeared in the 1976 book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins that defined meme as: "a unit of culture transmission, or a unit of imitation." A meme or viral meme is an idea, thought, question, or statement that spreads rapidly and is used as a reference when discussing something.

Today, a meme is most commonly media, such as a funny picture or video. For example, with the Rickroll meme, a fake link (e.g., Bill Gates is giving away a million dollars) is created, and when visited, the music video of Rick Astley's music video "Never Gonna Give You Up" is shown.

How to pronounce "meme"

Meme is pronounced as meam.

Examples of memes

Below are a few examples of popular memes mentioned on Computer Hope, with a brief description of each of them.

• All your base are belong to us
• Anonymous
• Full stop punctuation
• O'rly
• Pepe the Frog
• Rickroll
• The cult of Kek

Buzzword, Computer slang, Copium, Copypasta, Godwin's Law, Internet terms, Joke, Normie, Poe's law, Viral