Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Memes

What's a meme?

Ok, basic idea, a cliche is a meme. It's an idea or thought pattern that spreads from
person to person more or less like a virus. It's a neat idea in general, and has been written about in
Snow Crash. Imagine if you could create an idea so simple, so straightforward that it spread amongst everyone and effected a change.

Got it? Cool.

Now here's something that is not a popular thought. Personality tests for blogs are a meme complex. We take them,
and thinking they denote us then put it up. It then catches the eye of the people who are reading the blog and
they take it, spreading the virus. The only reason they don't spread faster is because they are reliant on someone
willingly exposing themselves through reading and having an existing context shared with you.

Granted this isn't a condemnation of these 'What X are you' tests . Being infected by a meme isn't a bad thing. Some of
our best ideas are memes. No one ever accused another person of being weak for learning and propogating E=MC^2.
Apparently some people have posited that any tool using culture has memetic complexes running around in their population.
Another interesting meme is that pipe smokers are "smart". What told us that? And how many pipe smokers have you seen lately
at the latest symposia?

If anything, a personality test, is a community strengthener between people. If you have ever taken a test and then compared
it with your friends, then you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Oh one other thing. I've taken this tests before and as you will see a few months back, I posted one up.

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