The origin of memes.

Memes are the day to day medicine of everybody in this age of internet.They not only make us laugh but are also an effective weapon to influence people,it is used by politicians to further their cause and ridicule the opposing person . But do you know how these memes came into existence?? Well lets find out.

According to the dictionary a meme is "An element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means."

But according to the Internet's  definition a meme is  "An image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations."

The term meme comes from the Greek word 'mimema'  which mean 'imitated' it was introduced in 1976 by British revolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins Dawkins conceived of memes as the cultural parallel to biological genes and considered them, in a manner similar to “selfish” genes, as being in control of their own reproduction and thus serving their own ends. Understood in those terms, memes carry information, are replicated, and are transmitted from one person to another, and they have the ability to evolve, mutating at random and undergoing natural selection, with or without impacts on human fitness.

So in the 21st century when the internet memes came into existence they got their name from this theory, Internet memes spread from person to person through imitation, typically by e-mail, social media, and various types of Web sites. They often take the form of pictures, videos, or other media containing cultural information that, rather than mutating randomly, have been deliberately altered by individuals.

References:-  Britannica