Repeat after meme

2009-01-23 09:18

Alistair Fairweather

Ever since its earliest days the internet has teemed with viruses. Once these nefarious beasts waited until you stuck a foreign floppy into your disk drive (now, now, stop giggling) before they infected your computer, but the web has transformed them into epidemics that travel at the speed of light.

And yet, you've probably got one on your computer right now that you have knowingly passed on to all your friends and family, and then saved because it gave you so much pleasure.

You might call them chain letters, or jokes, or spoofs, but as a phenomenon they have an infinitely cooler name - memes. The word was coined by Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, to describe "mind viruses" - ideas or behaviours that human beings are compelled to pass on to each other.

A familiar example of a meme at work is a fad that spreads through a school. Whether it's Yu-Gi-Oh cards or Spongebob dolls or that perennial favourite, the yo-yo, we've all seen how quickly these fashions can erupt, spread and then subside, usually leaving parents with a pile of expensive junk all just past its cool-by date.

But the internet has taken this phenomenon to the next level. Apart from supercharging old-fashioned ideas like chain letters (I'm still waiting for $20 000 from Bill Gates for forwarding that e-mail), the Web has given birth to virulent new strains.

Hands up how many of you never received any of the Chuck Norris jokes? You know the ones: "Chuck Norris counted to infinity - twice", or "Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer, too bad he has never cried." Or how about the whole "Hoff" craze - those cheesy pictures of David Hasselhof with amusing captions like "Don't Hassle the Hoff"?

Literally hundreds of millions of people gleefully exchanged both those memes, because they found them too amusing not to share. But what's more significant is that many people used the parent meme to make their own. Within a week of the "Hoff" meme arriving in South Africa, we already had localised versions, like a bottle of wine labelled "Drostdy-Hoff".

In other words these jokes didn't just get passed around, but grew and changed and improved as they spread. These spontaneous "mutations" made the fads last much longer and spread much further than they would have otherwise.

And there are hundreds more of them out there, everything from LOLcats (pictures of cats with amusing captions in pidgin English) to the current "Fail" craze (pictures of mishaps like capsized ships with the caption "Fail!").

On the one hand this might seem depressing - we've invented a vast egalitarian global network to enable the smooth transmission of jokes about washed up TV stars and cats in funny poses. But what we're really talking about is mechanism though which hundreds of millions of people not only spread messages, but improve and augment them. The possibilities for good are literally limitless.

Marketers realised the potential of memes years ago, and are now experts at leaking "banned" adverts onto the internet (where they "go viral"), or bribing people into recruiting their friends to mailing lists with iPods and visits to Britain.

They do this by turning their messages into memes - by wrapping them in viral packaging. And if the money men can do it, then so can charities, NGOs and governments. Imagine a viral e-mail that collected feedback on a new bill in parliament, or that collected micropayments for the SPCA.

This might sound like pie-in-the-sky, but if people can peddle sugar water using memes, then they can sure as heck help the needy or strengthen democracy. People want to do the right thing - we just need to make it easier for them.

If you want to see some memes in the flesh visit Alistair's blog. He promises not to fail.

Send your comments to Alistair.

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