If You're Reading This, You Probably Could Have Done Better On Monday's Final Jeopardy Than Two Of The Contestants

If you were to ask a certain editor-in-chief of Know Your Meme the question, "What is a meme?," he will give you the answer, "any type of viral culturally transmitted information."

If you were to give a panel of Jeopardy! contestants the answer, "A noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission," as host Mayim Bialik did on last night's "Final Jeopardy!" clue, evidently they would struggle to come up with the question, "What is a meme?"

Yes, the word "meme" was the solution to Monday's Final Jeopardy, stumping two of the three contestants while KYM staffers and many internet-literate viewers screamed at their television sets. Among the participants, Armand Sanchez came up with "um?" and Emma Henke came up with "thought" before the champion Joe Feldman correctly identified "meme."

Not me screaming “IT’S MEME” at #Jeopardy bc I retained exactly one thing from my whole college education

— Jess Roepken (@JessRoepken) June 27, 2022

Guessed final jeopardy right because it was “meme” and no one in the room heard, this is my joker moment.

— Queef Strokinoff (@poopsoxx) June 28, 2022

As resident meme experts of the internet, we have to commend Jeopardy! for using the proper definition of the term as it was coined by evolutionary biologist, ethologist and author Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It is also the definition we use here as opposed to the outdated, limited understanding of the word as image macros, aka "funny text over pictures."

This is far from the first time Jeopardy! has incorporated meme culture into its game. The television show name-dropped also Know Your Meme in a clue for Netflix and Chill back in 2016 and once had a meme-centric round with the categories, Dad Bod, Yas Queen, What Color is This Dress?, Keyboard Cat, Squad Goals and "Me"mes.