Properties of Memes That Spread
= properties of a meme that make it spread more and live longer Memetic properties can be divided into a few broad classes:
- Memorable = easy to remember/understand
- Spreadable = people want to spread the meme
- Durable = hard to get rid of
- Aggressive = fights competing memes Memorable+Spreadable: Properties that increase memorability and spreadability:
- Emotional
- Negative emotion is stronger than positive emotion here
- Excitingness is an exception — very powerful positive emotion.
- Shame increases memorability but decreases spreadability
- For ideologies in particular, guilt can be very powerful.
- Simple
- Tribal
- Humans are wired to think in terms of ingroup vs outgroup.
- Practically Valuable
- Narrative-like
- Stories/narratives are more memorable abstract ideas
- Memes can be stories, or encoded within stories
- Triggerable
- =experiences/thoughts bring that meme to mind
- (For humans in particular): deals with sex,food, or power Spreadable
- Status-raising
- AKA ‘social currency’
- Public
- Pro-self-spreading
- = contains the message “you should spread this meme”
- Ambitious
- = makes people more ambitious, or selects for ambitious people. Durable
- Uncounterable
- = no appealing countermemes
- Exemple: “Breast Cancer Awareness”
- Adaptable
- = meme can change gradually (”mutate”) as the world changes, without losing its identity
- Example: Conservatism is adaptable, Liberalism isn’t
- Sexual
- = meme can change by integrating with other memes
- Example: Americanism is sexual, Nazism isn’t.
- Addictive
- “You are a member of marginalized identity group Y; anyone who notices facts that could be construed to call this narrative into question is thereby hurting you by invalidating your identity.” Aggressive
- Censoring
- = promotes censoring opposing memes
- “anti free speech”
More properties: -Deals with sex, food, or power (memorable) -Looks like altruism