Memeing

Submission 17,915

Part of a series on Internet Slang. [View Related Entries]

About

Memeing is an internet slang verb that means to create or spread a meme. In 2013, the verb evolved to also mean communicating through memes.^[3]

Origin

On May 3rd, 1996, Matthew Aaron Taylor first used the term memeing in the title Fiction, AL, and the Memeing of Life for an online article about memes on the site Telepolis.^[8] The article begins with an outline of its topic, saying "Fiction could be understand as a form of artificial life. Perhaps it is the greatest globally networked AL experiment in history. Are fictional characters alive? Are they real? Starting point for a reality check of claims in the field of AL." The article goes on to directly reference the inventor of the term memes, Richard Dawkins, specifically saying "this assertion is not particularly remarkable or original, as it is based on self-evident properties of fiction and on well known ideas that have been advanced by Richard Dawkins, Douglas Hofstadter and others."^[8]

Richard Dawkins

The verb memeing is derived from the noun meme, introduced by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.^[1] He derived the noun meme from mimeme, an English spelling of the Greek term μίμημα pronounced mīmēma which means "imitated thing".^[5]

We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'. [Richard Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene," 1976]

Spread

On March 28th, 2012, the South Park episode "Faith Hilling" first aired, which centers around memetic trends, in particular photo fads. During one segment of the episode, the main cast is shown a graphic educational video titled "Bloody Sunday: The Dangers of Memeing",^[2] which features various characters being hit by trains in absurd scenarios because they were tebowing (shown below).

On August 24th, 2015, Gravity Falls released an episode titled The Stanchurian Candidate,^[7] in which the character Wendy says "You're memeing fast, and none of them are good" while showing a picture of a one does not simply walk into moridor meme of the character Stanford Pines on her phone (shown below).

Various Examples

Images

Videos

Get Memed On

Get memed on or get memed is an expression used on the internet as a parody of the meme get dunked on which uses the verb memed, the past tense of memeing.^[6]