Comments Elsewhere

It’s certainly possible for terms to outrun their origins and it’s certainly true that people who use “meme” to describe weblog games that involve suggesting the game to other people aren’t using in its strictly technical sense. But (1) being divorced from a strict technical doesn’t necessarily mean being divorced from all the connotational baggage along with it; it’s pretty clear (to me at least) that the term “meme,” even when misused, is still associated with close relatives such as “mind virus” and the Dark Magic view of persuasion. This is especially true when it is either used or misused to describe anything more serious than silly weblog games; and especially hwen it’s either used or misused to describe anything with which the speaker disagrees (say, religious beliefs or various political myths). I think that the abuse of the term to (for example) simply polemically shove your opponent’s positions out of the space of reasons clearly is a part of both the canonical use and the canonical misuse.

Also, (2) this is especially true when the word is some ghastly neologism with less than 30 years of philological background behind it, with the original coiners and a linguistic community of true believers still using it to mean what it was coined to mean. Particularly when that sub-community is where the people habitually misusing it got the word from, and when they are still in active conversation using (or misusing) the terminology with the echt-memeticists. This isn’t a case like “snob”, which everyone used to use to abuse supposedly vulgar poor tradesmen, but now everyone uses to abuse the snooty rich. It’s a case of a misuse that is not linguistically very far separated from the technical use.

Both (1) and (2) mean that it may very well be worth sticking to the original technical meaning, so as to cast light on the sort of language-games that users of the term are playing, and misusers of the term are dipping their toes into. (For related examples that aren’t ghastly neologisms, consider the gross distortions by the Dobsons and Limbaughs of the world that are now applied to recent coinages such as “moral relativism” and “radical feminism,” both of which admit of a technical definition and both of which are still actively used in their original senses. The abuses of the terms are now much more widely circulated than the correct uses, but that doesn’t mean that we should just admit multiple meanings and defer where necessary to common usage amongst know-nothing blowhards.)

Also, (3) even if we would be right to just distinguish meme-1 from meme-2 (objecting only to the echt-memetics and not to the common twisting of the term), there’s still always aesthetic criticism.

I mean, Jesus, who would want to cast aside perfectly lovely words like “idea” or “game” or “suggestion” with a bunch of ridiculous, cutesy “memetics” argot?