Put frankly, memes are mind viruses.
They are bite-sized ideas designed to spread, change and infect as many people as possible. Their survival depends on an inherent adaptability. The more forms a meme takes, the more chances it has to mutate into a new strain. And a sufficiently changed meme, like speciation in animals, might have very little relation to the original idea.
This idea, first put forth by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene," once primarily concerned societal trends like catch phrases, popular clothes or music.
Now, under the direction (or, more precisely, indirection) of Internet space, these tiny, flitting ideas have developed a prominence as yet unseen in human history.
For example, I can’t imagine that anyone under the age of 30 (living in any country) does not know what a “troll face” — or, in original terminology “cool face” — is. The toothy rictus of this drawing has reached a state of immortality on the Internet and pervades social media like leprosy used to in ancient Judea.
So, why is this phenomenon bad for us?
First, memes tend to oversimplify in their content and perpetuate stereotypes over thought. They are the equivalent of going around holding cue cards instead of making the effort to talk to people. As such, they convey a vague general impression (joy, hate, disgust) rather than anything personalized.
This is important for a number of reasons: we convey information to each other based on not only our general outlook and temperament, but also with small individual tics of behavior and expression. The general sign of “ultimate contentment” in any long-term relationship (romantic or otherwise) is if both parties understand the minutiae of the other. With memes, none of this work to create an individual is necessary.
Second, too many people who perpetuate memes fail to impart their own personal variation of it, and yet continue to find it funny — sometimes for months.
If you have ever worked with people who had, at one point, an obsession with the “doge,” meme, you will understand what it is like to live in the world of Franz Kafka’s "The Trial."
A joke, not very funny in the first place, is guaranteed to cause the kind of laughter once reserved for the rapid-fire jokes of Mitch Hedburg. If you are not also charmed by the meme, those around you will appear to speak a very different language.
The third is the newish phenomenon of monetizing memes. Because they are viruses, manufactured commercial memes are beginning to appear on the Internet marketplace. As advertising gets more and more surreal, they are beginning to adapt the form of the meme to target as many consumers as possible. (The Old Spice “I’m on a horse” guy is a prime example.)
Because they are starting to be perverted (or created) by unscrupulous ideological or commercial parties, the very form itself is becoming even more dangerous.
As dystopian future as it sounds, they are literally implanting the naturally occurring mind-viruses of the Internet with their own messages.