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[VirianLexicon]:[meme]

!!!Meme
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(pron. `meem') A contagious information pattern that replicates by symbiotically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern. (Term coined by [Dawkins|DawkinsRichard], by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic. ([Wheelis|WheelisMark], quoted in [Hofstadter|HofstadterDouglass].)
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See also: [meme-complex].

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