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Virus and Bacteria are important part of Darwinism!
So, someone wants to go "Viral" someone else will go "Anti-Viral" hence Pathogen! Or in simple English Anarchist! Don't you love a Core Hacker! lol
The first rule of memes, as it is for genes, is that replication is not necessarily for the good of anything; replicators flourish that are good at … replicating!”
The same misunderstandings that plague evolutionary theory are revisited in viral and memetic theory (but on a much larger scale). Many people think that genes evolve toward a goal instead of simply away from impediments.
Substitute "suited to the environment" instead of "good", and this will help to explain somethingawful, fark and many other inane memes.
Good stuff, too many people talk about memes who don't have the first clue about genes or evolution. Memes are a helpful construct mapping the similarities between genetic theory and cultural transmission. I think many people need to re-visit biology 101 before they can hope to understand Web 2.0.
~ Alex
Terrorism
Suicide
Drug abuse
Antisemitism
Pyramid schemes
Cults
You forgot "Snakes On A Plane"
Information is spread via repeaters. That is to say people who repeat information. Just as genes replicate information replicates. Today, the mainstream media has depends on centralized sources that are then repeated all over the world, and the mainstream media has a vested interest in keeping the secrets of the established elite, because the established elite own the mainstream media and/or advertise on the mainstream media and/or permit or deny FCC licenses to the mainstream media. The mainstream media is full of lies, manipulation and propaganda. Our major media system is based on a system that is good at replicating centralized propaganda. My sense is that this article was referring to the alternative media. More truth is to be found in the Alternative media than the mainstream.
As for the author’s references to "adopted bad ideas"...
* Blood feuds ...if elitists start a war, the other side needs to fight back. The people who start wars are often elitist with a lot of money. The people blamed are usually poor.
* Terrorism...is an idea and an idea and never be killed. That is why a "war on terrorism" is just an excuse to run up our debt and fatten the wallets of government contractors.
* Suicide... when did this ever catch on in any significant way as a viral idea (stupid example).
* Drug abuse... Define "abuse". When did this ever catch on in any significant way as a viral idea (stupid example). The idea of a "war on drugs" is another example of a stupid viral idea. "Drugs" can never be defeated. This causes endless war and endless victims of war and endless expenditure on war. No tolerance = no sense!
* Anti-Semitism - About 90% of Jews are not Semitic and the 10% who are Semitic are not the controversial bankers (generally speaking). Oddly, the Palestinians are a Semitic people. What a mind scramble. This is an example of a viral idea put out by the mainstream that is not true but has lodged in the general consciousness and continues to replicate.
* Pyramid schemes - good is relative to point of view. Some benefit from pyramid schemes.
* Cults - saying all cults are bad is like saying all religions are bad. Another bad example.
THIS ARTICLE IS TERRIBLE!!!!
Suicide was considered "good" under many circumstances by the Japanese as a way of atoning for mistakes or dying for the Emperor. Antisemitism was considered "good" by the Nazis. Terrorism is viewed as "dying for the cause" or "freedom fighting" by those who practice it.
So since they are considered "good" by some, and generally spread amongst those who consider them so, how does that affect the argument?
Also See: Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point
As for everything else you had to say, you need to do your research on those comments as well. You really don't know what you're talking about. Everything in our society besides our basic instincts have caught on in some way or another, influenced by others, becoming fads or things that stick with us and blend into part of our culture.
It's a great article!
we use "meme" because we don't have a word for the livingness of what we call ideas, but they are actually elements of consciousness, we don't have them, they have us ...
which means ipr is built on a shallow reality meme, among other
There's no such thing.
Essentially, anyone who uses this word is announcing "I am intellectually lazy and am simply not up to the task of trying to explain human behavior."
This is fine, but just don't pretend otherwise. It's not as if no one has ever come up with explanations for things like
* Blood feuds
* Terrorism
* Suicide
* Drug abuse
* Antisemitism
* Pyramid schemes
* Cults
A lot of anthropology is dedicated to illuminating practices like these.
But of course, they are actually the result of the activity of some mythical entity. Might as well just say the gods did it.
At least that explanation doesn't pretend to be rational.
Really? And intellectually lazy? Memes are certainly not some "mythical entity" but a unit that has been studied by many intellectually rigorous scientists, Richard Dawkins, Susan Blackmore and Daniel Dennett to name a few.
This whole article is one big fallacy. It is begging the question from the start. His premise is that ideas don't have to be good to be accepted. SO, these ideas are bad, they are accepted, so they are bad. You did nothing to prove your point beyond the common sense of your premise. Maybe next time find something original to say and then try to support it. Stop attempting to rip off other people's ideas (and failing miserably I might add).
I don't know how far enough memetics has gone toward explaining everything about consciousness, but the analogy of ideas to memes works sufficiently well in understanding the transmission, or infectivity, of ideas from host to host.
Memes, like any replicator, need media to grow in and be transmitted through. It's very easy for the wrong ideas to spread through the right kind of media and into all sorts of brains.
How this specifically relates to 'viral marketing' depends on the marketer and the marketed.
So to whom is this thesis, which I believe is correct, worth more? The viral marketer or the target market?
Most socalled jews aren't even descended from Shem (Shemites/Semites), the second of Noah's three sons so the word anti-semite doesn't even make sense.
I would expand your argument against the naive use of the term 'good' in this article. There is no such thing as good in an objective sense (whatever that may mean). By using and presupposing the notion of 'good' in your article you are unintentionally creating the myth you are trying to 'bust'.
Just refrain from applying this concept of 'good'. Using it mearly creates a sentence that *looks* like a meaningfull statement, e.g. compare: "Mythbusting: Ideas Do Not Spread Because they are Blue".
For further reading e.g.:
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse
Note: do not read the translated version, just learn another language you might actually learn something in the process ;-)
we should rid ourselves of the notion that we only adopt ideas, content and products because of how good and useful they are. we instead adopt them because they are good at getting adopted.
thnx..
nanreh
However, you didn't add Communism to your list of bad ideas that keep going and going and going...like the energizer bunny.
I've been doing amateur research on how "memes" propagate through Twitter via the retweet mechanism. Very simple measurements. Initial results are fascinating. Something very unusual going on there. Does not follow the standard model. Might be fun to discuss on Twitter. I just started following you. I'm Carl_Ingalls there.