could someone please explain what "MEME" means?

what is a MEME ?

And while we're at it, where does "avatar" come from?

As far as I know, "avatar" is somewhat akin to "icon." I am most familiar with the term from scifi, fantasy novels, in which an avatar is a physical representation of a mystical being.
This is one of the dictionary definitions from dictionary.com

1. The incarnation of a Hindu deity, especially Vishnu, in human or animal form.
2. An embodiment, as of a quality or concept; an archetype: the very avatar of cunning.
3. A temporary manifestation or aspect of a continuing entity: occultism in its present avatar.

I had a feeling it was coopted from another usage, but could not think of what that could be.

http://maxwell.lucifer.com/virus/alt.memetics/what.is.html

on edit:

<snip

Glenn Grant: Meme (pron. meem): A contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern. (Term coined by Dawkins, by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic.

>sinp

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hurts now. ;)

Main Entry: meme
Pronunciation: 'mEm
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of mimeme, from mim- (as in mimesis) + -eme
Date: 1976
: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture

it's not included in my American Heritage dictionary . . .

<philosophy> /meem/ Richard Dawkins's
term for an idea considered as a replicator, especially with
the connotation that memes parasitise people into propagating
them much as viruses do.

Memes can be considered the unit of cultural evolution. Ideas
can evolve in a way analogous to biological evolution. Some
ideas survive better than others; ideas can mutate through,
for example, misunderstandings; and two ideas can recombine to
produce a new idea involving elements of each parent idea.

The term is used especially in the phrase "meme complex"
denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an
organised belief system, such as a religion. However, "meme"
is often misused to mean "meme complex".

Use of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans
(and presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts)
cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has become
more important than biological evolution by selection of
hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for
tolerably obvious reasons.

think of it as a viral idea. An idea that easily spreads throughout society. Urban Legends are memes of sorts.

The word meme gets used on ideas that people WANT to become viral in nature.

Analogous to a gene that survives or dies out depending on the fitness it confers on its organism, a meme is an idea that survives or dies out; it is not dependent on its truth or falsity, but on how well it promotes its own survival.

I think it's from the biologist Richard Dawkins. Both genes and memes are the smallest unit of their kind.

In a nutshell, anyway.

can you give me examples of memes?

is that we are fighting the terrorists in Iraq and not on the streets of NYC or Chicago.

so a LIE can be a MEME?

The big one that usually comes up is monotheism. Religions that feature many gods will be (relatively) more tolerant of competing religions, because the god(s) of the competing religion don't necessarily run afoul of polytheistic dogma. However, competing god(s) will run afoul of a monotheistic religion (thou shalt have no other gods before Me). So monotheistic religions are more likely to take out competing religions, which makes them more "fit" from a natural selection standpoint. (Principles of natural selection aren't only biological, but can be found wherever there is competition for limited resources--in this example, worshippers).

(That wasn't any sort of comment on religions as communion-with-the-divine, by the way, just on religions as social creations.)

Most memes, however, are not so grandiose. Anything that people believe for reasons other than truth or falsity--because it makes them feel good ("Americans are God's favored people"), cements an in-group against an out-group ("Communists want to destroy America", "People who read/watch/listen to X are culturally superior"), or provides an object lesson against risky behavior (any one of a million urban legends)--is likely a meme, as are social constructs that appeal to biological drives (pornography, teenage rebellion) or create favorable social environments for themselves (as the meme of racism creates apartheid, or the meme of laissez-faire capitalism creates, well, economic apartheid).

Finish this:

"plop, plop, fizz, fizz..."

That's a meme...something that seems to simultaneously infect large groups of people with the same mindset or ideas.

70% of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was somehow responsible for 9/11. Everyone denies ever having made such a claim. Where did this idea come from, and how did it get so firmly implanted in so many brains? It's not a fact, it's a meme.

It's in the last chapter of The Selfish Gene (published in the '70's, I believe). It's considered the cultural (nurture rather nature) equivalent of the gene. Something that propells an idea across generations without the use of a biological mechanism.

A country "of the people, by the people, and for the people" could be considered a meme.

:hi:

sometimes I jus' say "please"
:hi:

;)