A meme (pronounced "meem")

Is an idea that replicates by symbiotically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the meme -- similar to the way a t-phage virus reproduces by hijacking the DNA of a bacterium. Unlike a virus, which is encoded in DNA molecules, a meme is nothing more than a pattern of information, one that happens to have evolved a form which induces people to repeat that pattern. The information pattern is held in an individual's memory, which is capable of being copied to another individual's memory. Individual slogans, ideas, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashion are typical memes.

Whether memes can be considered true life forms or not is a topic of some debate, but this is irrelevant: they behave in a way similar to life forms, allowing us to combine the analytical techniques of epidemiology, evolutionary science, immunology, linguistics, and semiotics, into an extremely effective system known as "memetics". Rather than debate the inherent "truth" or lack of "truth" in an idea, memetics is largely concerned with how that idea itself gets replicated.

Memetics is vital to the understanding of cults, ideologies, and marketing campaigns of all kinds, and it provides the best immunity from dangerous information-contagions. It is also about protecting yourself from bad ones.

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