• MutilationWave@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    I see a comment like this every day or so. Just make your own community if you don’t want to circle jerk with us until the masters cut our heads off to sell them as NFTs.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      4 days ago

      Why do people argue against community names (and words in general) having meaning?

      • Hackworth@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        4 days ago

        They’re just using the original definition of meme - “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture”

        • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          4 days ago

          There’s a problem with taking a one sentence definition out of context and then citing like that. You’re reading that definition here as though it were “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that can be spread from person to person within a culture”.

          Whereas to me it’s clear that sharing a thing online at least once doesn’t make it a meme. If it did, the word loses any useful meaning and may as well be “thing”. Meme used to mean that the image or idea was so popular it gained a symbolic meaning that an entire culture could recall in a glance. Not just that it was a thing they saw on the Internet once.

          • Hackworth@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            4 days ago

            For more about the full context, pick up The Selfish Gene, in which Richard Dawkins coins the term and explains it as a “gene” of information. Genes are genes whether or not they get passed on.

          • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            4 days ago

            If it did, the word loses any useful meaning and may as well be “thing”.

            Look up the origins of the term. The word “meme” has always had this problem, because it was poorly defined in the first place.