It's all in the Meme

During mid November 2011, the “Kolaveri” song by actor Dhanush was released and it instantly became viral on social networking sites. Within no time the song became the most searched Youtube video. As on today it has 60 million hits in Youtube.

I am surprised to see, even the word “Kolaveri” is being used by some of the TV panelists during serious discussions. The word seems to be gradually sneaking its way into English dictionaries.

“Is Kolaveri a classic case of Internet Meme?”

Meme and the Cultural Evolution

In his hugely successful book “Selfish Gene” Richard Dawkins, had introduced a new theory similar to Darwin’s theory of evolution. While Darwin’s theory dealt with the evolution of the living species, Dawkins’ new theory was about the creation, propagation and evolution of “cultural properties”. 

“Meme” is a unit of cultural information that propagates from one mind to another forming the basis of a cultural evolution. This is similar to how a “gene” propagates from one organism to another, as a unit of genetic information forming the basis of a biological evolution. 

Richard Dawkins describes the concept of Memetics as follows: 

“Examples of Memes are tunes, videos, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, icons, beliefs, thoughts, ideas, ways of making pots or of building arches etc. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leading from body to body via sperm or eggs, so Memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process, which in broad sense can be called imitation. 

“Memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind, you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell”

Like genes, memes also vary in their fitness level to survive in the human intellectual and cultural environments. Some fashion memes are short lived, whereas some memes such as religious concepts survive for generations. Memes can also be defined as “contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern.

According to Dawkins’ memetic theory successful memes will survive and procreate while failed memes will become extinct like genes. “Faith in God” is one of the most successful Memes that survived thousands of years of cultural evolution that resulted in several religious concepts that became part of human cultural ethos.

Another example for a very successful meme is “wearing clothes”. Our prehistoric ancestors discovered the benefits of “wearing clothes” compared to “living naked”. So meme of “living naked” had failed and almost become extinct. 

This implies that our present culture itself is a product of successful memes. We can never be sure whether all the contemporary memes will remain successful and survive in the future. Man is the sum of genetic and memetic properties. Darwin’s evolution theory and Dawkins’ meme theory combined together can explain all aspects of human behaviour.

The above thesis proposed by Dawkins, a respectable Evolution Biologist, was quite refreshing but extremely bold, and academically challenging for accommodating it within the conventional Darwinian framework and hence was rejected by many geneticists as ‘pseudo-science. But many others argue that Memetics is rather a complementary concept to the theory of evolution than a conflicting one. Interestingly most of the proponents of Lamarckian theory seem to have no hesitation in adapting Meme theory.

Dawkins’ theory proposes two metaphors for the Meme – Meme as Gene and Meme as Virus. I think the Internet Meme works as a virus.

Internet Meme as a mind virus

Internet Meme is an extension of the concept to the cyber world. The phrase Internet Meme is defined in Wikipedia as “A term used to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads in a faddish way from person to person via the Internet”.

Like a “meme” procreates and propagate through the cultural ethos of humanity an Internet meme spreads through the Web, using the methods available such as e-mail, blogs, forums, social networking sites, file sharing sites, instant messaging etc. Internet memes may evolve by mutation through adaptations, imitations, parodies etc.

Many a time it is inexplicable why some of the memes become extremely popular and survive; and why some others die out soon. Sometimes even the rumours and hoaxes spread through the Internet get embedded in the pop culture and attain the memetic status.

The Internet Meme, in its true sense, has the dangerous potential to infect the human minds with Meme virus. The replication strategy by oft-repeated slogans and catch-phrases could be so effective in causing chaos in the memetic ecosystem.

The recent panic due to a sense of insecurity felt by the people of North East, living in other regions of India is an example of memetic virus epidemic.

On a positive note, the concept of Internet-meme could also be used in a different way, and already is being applied in diverse fields such as marketing.

As on today, Internet Meme is a grossly misunderstood concept. The concept itself has spread across the Internet as a Meme, undergoing several levels of mutations and as a result, the Meme as conceived by Richard Dawkins and the so-called Internet-Meme (in most cases) seem to be two different things.

Coming back to the original question - 

“Is Kolaveri an Internet Meme?”  I am not too sure.