hashtag meme

First, what is meme?

>origins

The word meme originated with Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. In Dawkins' theory, gene, is a self-replicating unit of transmission in the case of biological evolution. Meme exemplified another self-replicating unit with potential significance in explaining human behavior and cultural evolution. He hypothesized that one could view many cultural entities as replicators, and pointed to melodies, fashions and learned skills as examples. Memes generally replicate through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient copiers of information and behavior.

"But if you contribute to the world's culture, if you have a good idea...it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved in the common pool......The meme-complexes of Socrates, Leonardo, Copernicus and Marconi are still going strong."

>what about now

We know memes as internet memes. An "Internet meme" is a concept that spreads rapidly from person to person via the Internet, largely through Internet-based E-mailing, blogs, forums, image boards like 4chan, social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, instant messaging, social news sites like Reddit, and video hosting services like YouTube and Twitch. In 2013, Richard Dawkins characterized an Internet meme as one deliberately altered by human creativity, distinguished from Dawkins's original idea involving mutation by random change and a form of Darwinian selection.

>my thinking

Now memes became an agent of protest. People imitate them, create them, spread them worldwide. If a meme is not catchy enough it dies. This internet meme phenomena changes our brain without question. We start to think in hashtags, talk in hashtags, be proud of creating a viral hashtag. Are people really care what kind of message a meme conveys? Is that message important? In most cases, internet memes are just for a laugh. In serious cases like politics, it's usual we spread a meme as a statement, a news hotspot now. But then? After 3 seconds of attention, is there still someone left to know the whole story behind a meme? By using meme as my topic, I want to raise people's awareness of its pro and con. Hopefully to let people know that think in meme can be a dangerous thing.

(we miss a meme easily as well as we notice it)