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The section for Internet should spawn another section, "Politics" due to the application and overlap in the last few USA presidential campaigns. The Internet is the site of political activity and memes are the language. Governmental and civic sector concern for "disinformation" is political and like the Internet is global in scale. Church of the Rain (talk) 19:12, 17 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"[D]etrimental to the welfare of their hosts"[edit]
>Memes that replicate most effectively enjoy more success, and some may replicate effectively even when they prove to be detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.
The quoted portion exists in the introduction to this article, and I don't understand what application this could have to most memes, or what would constitute a "host" in this context. (E.g., would the host be the person or idea featured in a meme, the person that created and/or posted it to an online forum, or the online forum, itself?)
Unless a substantive reason can be provided for keeping this, I would like to remove it. At present, it does not seem to add to the article in a meaningful way. Goatvillage (talk) 03:48, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Daniel Dennett (in From Bacteria to Bach and Back (2018), ch.13 fn.95) gives an example of a detrimental cultural meme by saying "It's like, when, like, you use a phrase which, like, isn't really, like, doing any serious work, but, like, you go on, like, using it". In this example the meme is the habit of interjecting the word "like" and the host is the person who exhibits that habit. The behaviour may be detrimental to the speaker (host), but the habit (meme) persists nonetheless and may even spread to other people (other hosts) who are exposed to it.
Memes, like viruses, may be mutualist (ie, helpful), commensal (roughly, neutral) or parasitic (ie, detrimental), and this is an important aspect of memetic theory that isn't explicitly described in the article (although there may be more under Memetics). I think the portion you quote is confusing because it has an unreasonable burden to carry in introducing a large and non-obvious concept without any prior explanation. Perhaps the article would benefit from a more thorough explanation of this aspect memetics in a separate section. Gholson (talk) 08:17, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
>For broad appeal, a meme might appeal to dissatisfaction and provide rough explanations for why things are going wrong. ... As such, fascism is the meme of collective brutality against those seen as "weak" or "foreign".
This (currently final) paragraph of the Etymology section doesn't relate to etymology in any way, but I'm undecided whether to simply remove it or to move it to another section (possibly Politics?). Gholson (talk) 09:10, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
level-4 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
