Meme moans

By Brian Clegg

My two favourite social media platforms are X and Bluesky – I love the contrast between their typical posts and the way I get a totally different view of the world from each. In some ways, Bluesky is a bit like Twitter in the early days. People are still posting pictures of their meals (please stop). And there are more memes than I now see on X.

I’ve never liked the concept of memes as originated by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene – as I commented in my review ‘The only part of the book that is open to significant question is the chapter on memes – Dawkins’ idea of a conceptual equivalent of genes that allow anything from ideas to advertising jingles spread through society. It was a nice thought, but has been too often taken as scientific fact in popular science writing, where it is anything but a proven concept.’ But these days the term is rarely used in the Dawkinsian sense, but instead primarily refers specifically to an image with overlaid text.

Many such memes are intended to be funny (and a few actually are)… but a lot of them on Bluesky are reminiscent of those vapid old motivational posters that feel as if they belong in the TV show The Office rather than real life. I’ve encountered a couple recently that I felt I had to reply to. One read:

51% of adults read 0 books 

a year. Only 16% read daily. 

Reading has declined by

43% over the last 20 years. 

The decline cuts across

age, gender, and race. 

No wonder it seems like all 

the serious people have

gradually disappeared.

Save your brain.

Read a book.

Be the counterculture.

Obviously I agree with the sentiment that reading books is a good thing (not just because I’m an author). But for me what was most interesting about this was the implications of ‘reading 0 books’. Is that the same thing as not reading a book? It feels philosophically different… 

More recently I saw this one:

The World Wide Web 

has made it possible 

to find in five hours 

what any competent librarian

can find in five minutes.!!

(Anon)

The reference to ‘The World Wide Web’ made it feel a touch dated, but I couldn’t help but suggest this is total nonsense.

I’m not anti-librarian. If you want a good book on a specific subject, I’d suggest that a librarian could do better than an internet search (though, for instance, I’m not sure a librarian be better for popular science or science fiction recommendations that my Popular Science book review site). But that’s not what it says.

Practically any random bit of information could be found a lot faster online than by asking a competent librarian to dig it up without internet access. (If they do have internet access it rather ruins the point – librarians aren’t the only ones who can do good web searches or use AI.)

Here’s a list of a few top-of-the-head questions I think could be answered far faster with a web search than by asking a librarian (who doesn’t live in Swindon):

• Where was I born?
• Where are the two locations with the biggest tidal ranges in the world?
• What’s the name of the road that goes past the Orbital Centre in Swindon?
• What date (including year) in the modern calendar was Isaac Newton born?

I’m sure you would have your own examples too: suggestions welcome!

Image from Unsplash+ by Getty Images – I asked Unsplash for images of memes. About a quarter of them were of cats. Provide your own text…

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.