Memes and Viral Content

In 1976 evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explored the motivations behind an organism's behavior in his book The Selfish Gene. He proposed that the survival of a genetic sequence depends on its ability to be spread through replication, such as by sexual reproduction. In this manner, the gene survives beyond the original organism and its actions. Genes mutate and evolve, leading to the emergence of new traits that can be significantly different from the original source. Dawkins then applied this biological concept to culture. In the same way that genetic information travels across generations of a species, cultural information disseminates through society in patterns, though not necessarily as it was originally intended. These traveling units of cultural information are known as...