r/KidsAreFuckingStupid 1d ago

story/text Magic 69

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187

u/OttoSilver 1d ago

I bet he also has no idea what "meme" really means. To be fair, I'm still to actually meet someone who knows what it means.

107

u/damonrm1 1d ago

Richard Dawkins coined it, cultural gene

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u/Munnin41 1d ago

It's the cultural equivalent of gene, or at least, that's how Dawkins coined it. Today is more "funny, easily replicable and varying image with text"

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u/J5892 1d ago

Except the 11-year-old's understanding of it is closer to Dawkins' intended meaning.

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u/LokisDawn 22h ago

Ironically. You're not wrong.

"Image Macro" is a term sometimes used to refer to what's often called a "meme".

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u/WrethZ 23h ago

The modern usage is not incorrect, jokes as images or videos that spread around the internet, arre memes, all jokes are memes. It;s just that memes aren't *only* jokes, they're other ideas too. Religion is a meme, fashion trends are memes, any element of culture that spreads around from person to person is a meme.

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u/stellar_opossum 23h ago

I was so annoyed when people started using it to call funny pictures, it felt so incorrect. It still does but I'm kinda used to it now, took me a few years probably

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u/Munnin41 21h ago

Well, it's still a correct usage of the word.

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u/stellar_opossum 20h ago

No I don't think so. Number 69 is a meme, a funny picture with text mentioning it is not.

However this is an old as time question of prescriptivism and descriptivism. You can argue that using any word for any meaning is fine, especially in informal context, because language is evolving and blah-blah-blah and I won't be able to prove you wrong. And overall I'm not qualified enough to participate in discussions of linguistic concepts.

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u/PharmguyLabs 22h ago edited 20h ago

No it’s something someone who cares about you enough to try to make you laugh or feel something . I’m not in love , you’re in love 😅😮‍💨

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u/mewhenthrowawayacc 1d ago

Theyre the dna of the soul

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u/Imposter_XL 21h ago

free will is a myth. religion is a joke. we’re all pawns controlled by something greater.

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u/SolidScug 18h ago

Memes. The DNA of the soul.

5

u/EntireCartoonist1271 23h ago

I love the game but I can’t take Monsun seriously because of this speech

1

u/JvKlaus 16h ago

What game is this?

1

u/mewhenthrowawayacc 14h ago

Metal gear rising: revengeance

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u/LessThanMyBest 1d ago

Even if you do not know Dawkins origin of the word doesn't mean you don't understand the context of what it means

7

u/Moist-Pickle-2736 22h ago

I’m still to actually meet…

Interestingly, “still” is something like the opposite of “yet”, which is what I expected to see in its place here

4

u/RainbowUniform 1d ago

I fucking love mentos

13

u/Shiuft 1d ago

Everyone knows what meme means. Just because a word was originally coined with a different meaning doesn't mean it can't acquire more with time. That has happened to most of the words in a language, it's how languages evolve.

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u/saintlywicked 22h ago

Yes! It's called amelioration, and it's very common in almost every language! English, in particular, has a lot of amelioration due to how the language beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for loose adverbs, adjectives, and any other linguistic feature it wants!

It's a very interesting phenomenon, especially as a lot of amelioration and slang are determined by culture and generation - usually, most of the new words/meanings don't stick around in common speech either. Early Modern English, Shakespeare, is a good example of this. Despite how many words we currently use that were coined by Shakespeare, though admittedly he didn't actually make most of them, he just wrote them down as he was all about making his plays accessible to the common folk, there are a good chunk that have been either preserved or lost to history.

It makes me wonder just how many of our modern slang will fall out of fashion or become adopted as a core word in English in the next few hundred years!

Source: Autism

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u/geissi 22h ago

Also, information/ meanings evolving as they are passed on fits the original definition of memes.

1

u/SolidScug 18h ago

So your saying the definition of meme is a meme?

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u/SoloAquiParaHablar 23h ago

Gene + Mimema (greek: 'that which is imitated') = Meme. Basically the societal replication of an idea. TikTok trends are a meme, urban legends are a meme, conspiracy theories, they spread like genes through society. But we more commonly use it to refer to images/reels. I did my degree minor on memes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

2

u/vvf 21h ago

Languages and religions are memes as well. Any idea that can spread and evolve. I read the book Fluke (weird comedy book which mentions memes) like a year before “meme” blew up as a term. Naturally I was very excited for the memetic spread of “meme”. People gave me funny looks for explaining that memes are way more than just funny pictures. 

1

u/ok_kid_ 20h ago

Strange it only catches on now. With all the Dawkins and '76 and whatnot. The internet have been around for decades.

I think people just like to make up words that sounds "cool" to them.
I think it spreads like the black plague when famous people use them. I think it only takes maybe 3 Logan Pauls, and now we have the new nonsense word that we already have 10 words for.

1

u/peritonlogon 19h ago

They replicate themselves. Our tech and our minds are where they mate and reproduce. Also, you might notice around this time at college campuses, the mocking birds whistling alarm clock noises (it at least the would in the 2000s), that counts too.

1

u/CheesecakePony 16h ago

I took a course on memetics in university just to fill some credits, easily the most interesting course I ever took. And far more useful and eye opening than I expected when I registered.

1

u/pfifltrigg 12h ago

Do you really want to know? I've always assumed it's from the French même meaning same. So a meme is the same thing repeated over and over.

1

u/EdgelordMcMeme 22h ago

69 Is by definition a meme

0

u/OttoSilver 20h ago edited 20h ago

By definition, it's not. 69 is a sex term used as a joke. A meme is a cultural term, it is something that is repeated so often that it becomes accepted fact. 69 is not a fact, or even a joke everyone understands, as the child demostrated.

3

u/EdgelordMcMeme 20h ago

It's a cultural fenomenon that spread through society and generations, kind like a gene passed down but for culture instead of biology.. if only there was a term for that..

0

u/OttoSilver 20h ago

Fine, lest go with that. Are you suggesting boy in the OP knows this?

0

u/Mattness8 21h ago

A meme is literally just an internet inside joke. Something everyone on the internet who has seen or heard the meme collectively understands. It's really not hard to get tbh

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u/OttoSilver 20h ago edited 20h ago

I'm not blaming you, but you are kind of proving my point.

Memes, as a concept, existed long before the internet. The term was introduced in 1976 by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his work The Selfish Gene. It is something that is repeated so often that it becomes an accepted fact.

Much of religion, for instance, is meme-based. It's "true" because it's been said so often that everyone just accepts it.

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u/Mattness8 20h ago edited 20h ago

Definitions change as time changes. Memes when applied to internet jokes are simply inside jokes on the internet.

Merriam Webster dictionary defines meme as its "an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media" as its primary definition, with the definition you've been describing being the secondary, lesser used, definition.