Aunger’s Definition: Memes as Our Reaction to Societal Events

(Note: Saying that writing and getting Meme Life published has been life changing would be putting it mildly. This book as allowed me to travel all across the United States to talk about memes, be on panels with amazing academics, and have wonderful conversations with others about digital culture. Reviewing this text after spending two years working on it has lead me to think more critically about the definitions of memes I was able to include in the book. One of the definitions that I wish I would have included before the book was sent to the printers was the work that Robert Aunger did studying memes. There were two reasons that the following passage was left out of the original version. First, the biological focus on The Electric Meme meant it escaped my initial focus of a definitional overview of memes. The second reason was that a review of this work that would fit the context of the first chapter of Meme Life proved to be difficult. Therefore, I wish to offer this posting as a supplement to the first chapter. The following should be an additional section in chapter one between the end of the “Blackmore’s Definition: Memes as an Imitation of Reality” section and the beginning of “Shifman’s Definition: Memes as Collective Expressions.” My hope is that this posting would correct that oversight and encourage further discussion of the definitional construction of memes.)

Aunger’s Definition: Memes as Our Reaction to Societal Events

One of the researchers that studied this blossoming of the Internet and its development (especially in how the Internet is a representation of popular culture) was Robert Aunger in his groundbreaking work, The Electric Meme (2002). Aunger frames his work with the idea that the Internet is one part of the sociobiological and evolutionary psychological development of human beings as a species. 

Sociobiology examines how genes (and the byproduct of those genes in the form of living organisms) adapt to environmental stimuli and conditions related to our limitations with given environments. Specifically, Aunger advances the argument that memes are a sociobiological element “which evolved as a response to particular circumstances is governed by evolved psychological or physiological mechanisms that produce the relevant conditional strategy” (pg. 33). Sociobiological elements are governed set of rules that determine both the behaviors that we perform based on internal forces and the translation of how we satisfy our needs in the form of public actions. 

Aunger further argues that memes act as “hidden parasitic entities” that depend on a biological network to find stimuli to survive within their neurological environment via signal manipulation and synaptic firings. These parasites can attach themselves to artifacts of popular culture, social ritual, or even mundane daily interaction to spread between hosts, thus injecting themselves into the ecosystems of the host’s view of the world. The byproduct of being infected by these entities is a shared illusion of culture. Given enough time, this infection becomes the foundation of our cultural understanding of the world and allows us to be functional members of society. The rationale that memes have been allowed to continue to infect us in this manner is that they are an effective compression of all of the “datapoints” needed to conceptualize the desirable social traits and acceptable societal beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors needed to maintain healthy human connections within our communities.

Aunger’s interpretation of memes highlights two significant aspects of these highly influential digital compositions. First, there is a sense that their virality is based on their need to survive. Suppose memes are “quasi-living entities” (as Aunger’s writing suggests). In that case, their sociobiological imperative is to add their distinct “genetic code” (in the form of cultural concepts) into other hosts to improve their survival chances. The more places the idea lives on, the higher the probability that it will be repeated and expanded to others. This focus on their survival is also directly related to the second aspect worth highlighting. While these byproducts are “thought impressions” that are shared and exposed to the world, memes themselves want to stay hidden. Exposed memes are more likely to be attacked by the body’s defenses. As viruses that enter the human body are confronted by antibodies designed to protect vital areas, memes would be similarly assaulted by a person’s logic and reasoning if the person understands this concept is “merely a meme.” Strong emotionally-constructed memes tend to overwhelm a person’s natural defenses, thus making them more rhetorically powerful and more likely to stay hidden.

It is essential to point out that Aunger’s conceptualization of the “virality of memes” came well before the ubiquity of memes on digital social media platforms and via mobile communication technologies. Therefore, it can be hard now to untangle memes as stand-alone entities from these access points. We should understand Aunger’s definition of memes based on his experiences with culture at the beginning of the century and his biological-focused theoretical framework that placed these artifacts into more significant cultural conversations.