this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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memes

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[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The word "meme" was coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene to allude to the concept of a unit of cultural information subject to mutation and selective pressure. The whole image-macro-overlaid-with-text interpretation is just an easily evolved exemplar which rose in popularity relatively recently.

A screenshot of a comment can effectively communicate a cultural concept. In some cases, much of the context of the concept being communicated is intrinsic to being a comment (green texts, Tumblr comment chains, etc).