You Don't Know What the word Meme Means

Some of you are saying "Dafuq is a meme?". That's good.

 Far too many of you are saying "Oh, I know what a meme is! It's, like, this little picture with a funny thing in it and words on the top yolo yolo swag swag swag."  Fucking kill yourself. You're a waste of flesh. You're breathing all the oxygen that should be going to people who aren't morons.

First off, you know who came up with the idea? Richard Motherfucking Dawkins. He's a biologist. That's right, a biologist, not some Beiber humping website.

A meme ( /ˈmiːm/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."

--The Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

So what does that mean, exactly? Well, let's start with the concept of idea. What's the easiest way to transfer an idea from your head, to some one else's? You just tell them. Just say it. If you're feeling frustrated, you can just say it. Here's an example: George is starting to become frustrated at everyone's misuse of the word 'meme', so, he shouts "GEORGE IS GETTING FRUSTRATED!" 

Some of you are looking at that picture and saying, like some kind of fool "Oooh! Oooh! That's a meme!" God damnit no! That's a macro! But, it's conveying an idea, so, that picture coupled with the idea, is a meme.

Let me try to expand a little on this. My older audience is going to recognize that phrase "GEORGE IS GETTING FRUSTRATED!" from the TV series Seinfeld. For all you youngsters out there, Seinfeld is what hipsters watched before, well, whatever it is that hipsters watch. Annoying Orange or something. But, if you're old enough to remember "GEORGE IS GETTING FRUSTRATED!", then you probably have heard people saying it in real life.

But why would some one say that? Perhaps that person, and some of that person's peers, were in a stressful situation, and knew, that if he or she shouted it in the manner of Jason Alexander (the actor who portrayed George Costanza), that people in the area would see the similarity, hear the comical cry of disparity, and find humor in the situation, laugh, and then be able to better handle the situation because they're now in a lighter mood.

But that's no exactly a meme yet. It's really far too direct. So, again calling on Seinfeld, let's look at another phrase. "These pretzels are making me thirsty." It comes from an episode where Kramer, the goofy neighbor, gets a small part in a Woody Allen film. He's supposed to say "These pretzels are making me thirsty." Unfortunately, he's unable to get the line out without sounding robotic and scripted. So, his friends Jerry, Elaine, and George try out the line, in an effort to help him perfect his delivery. Throughout the episode, the characters, while encountering pretzels, become immensely frustrated, and are compelled to shout (sometimes to complete strangers) "THESE PRETZELS ARE MAKING ME THIRSTY!" with such gusto and emotion that it sounds sincere. Way too sincere for a guy sitting at a bar eating pretzels commenting on how they're making him thirsty.

So, let's assume that it's the end of 1991 or early 1992, you're at the office, and you're trying to get that big five gallon jug into the water cooler. It's really a simple task, but if you've never done it before, your head is filled with images of the whole thing spilling into the Xerox machine (Remember those? Remember Xerox machines? Remember "Makin' copiiiiiies!"?). So now you're nervous about the spill, people are watching, you pick the thing up - clearly stressed and self conscious - and now little drips of water are spilling out onto the carpet. You shout "These pretzels are making me thirsty!" and now, suddenly, you're the funniest S.O.B. in the office!

But why? There were no pretzels? To an outside observer, this whole scene - the struggling water jug situation, the exclamation about thirst, people cracking up - it must seem ludicrous. But if you're one of the people with that special knowledge that what it really means is that the person who said it is in a precarious situation, and that precariousness has caused much consternation, and that this person recognizes the comedic elements of this predicament, and has decided to share this with others by referencing the same situation on Seinfeld by uttering that simple phrase - now that person has transferred the idea that "This is so frustrating that it's funny, just like on that show we all watch!" by uttering a nonsensical phrase - BOOM! that's a meme.

So now we can examine the so called memes that you see all over the internet. Some of them truly are memes, but just because an image is in a little square, and some ironic text has been added does not make it a meme, per se.

Here's a newer one: Scumbag Steve.That's not the guy in the picture's real name. In fact, according to some butthole on the internet, the guy in the picture is actually a gentleman. I don't care, because the character, the idea, the meme of Scumbag Steve is, well, a scumbag. You can see the image there to the right, and read what Scumbag Steve does. I could post a thousand of these pictures, and you'd really get the idea, but everyone has known some one like this in real life. Apply whatever your idea of a scumbag is to Scumbag Steve, and that's correct.

Now, what makes this a meme? Well, for starters, not everyone knows it's Scumbag Steve. You can't just look at it and say "Oh, that's Scumbag Steve." unless you already knew that was Scumbag Steve. Second, you see the picture, you know it's Scumbag Steve, and you know his behavior - you know he's gonna be a scumbag. You're comparing him to scumbags you know in real life. "This guy gets hit by a dodgeball and keeps playing, just like that punk I went to school with. Fuck that guy!" So in this way, it goes from an individual to another individual, or multiple individuals, the opposite of the pretzel thirst meme, where it went from an individual (the water cooler guy) to a group (the crowd of office employees.) Another example of individual to group would be people playing dodgeball, some one getting hit, but not going out, and one person commenting to others who had witnessed it "Scumbag Steve." and then they laugh because yeah, that is something that Scumbag Steve would do!

Am I a meme yet?

Millhouse is not a meme. Millhouse not being a meme is a meme. Some anonymous person, we'll call him Anon, thought that he (It's a guy because of Rule 30) could create a new meme by posting pictures of Millhouse and talking about how awkward and loser-ish he was (This was before the memes 'alpha' and 'beta' as adjectives existed) It got to the point that posting a picture of Millhouse and asking "Am I a meme yet?" as a way to mock others who were desperately trying to get people to like him or agree with him transferred the idea of this failed forced meme and any similarity to the people who knew that Millhouse was a failed forced meme, and in that way, Millhouse not being a meme is a meme.

Millhouse will never be a meme, and it's never lupus!

See what I did there? That phrase "See what I did there?"
 and "It's never lupus!" are both memes.
Millhouse not being a meme, and Dr. House saying
"It's never lupus." and not being Millhouse
are all memes, but putting a picture into a little
square making pop culture references is not a de facto meme.
As far as I know, inappropriately long image captions
is not a meme, either.