As bloggers we participate in memes, we start memes, sometimes we even end memes. In my Abridged Ethnography of the Blogosphere, I asserted the fact that there is a blogging culture, so it seems fitting that a commonly used word by bloggers has its roots in the culturally relevant study of memetics.

A meme, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, is as follows: “meme (mi:m), n. Biol. (shortened from mimeme … that which is imitated, after GENE n.). An element of a culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, esp. imitation“. In a grander sense, an oral history can referred to as a meme, or even language itself it transmitted by memetics. A blogging meme is much like this: When one puts up a meme post, they are imitating the post of another before them because they have been tagged. Then they are imitated by others as they are tagged.

But there is one major difference between the cultural meme and the blogging meme that I think is very important. While cultural memes are in essence to promote the status quo and to ensure similar beliefs as well as behaviours, blogging memes do not imply that the same idea must be preserved. They allow for personal expression, which can in fact serve to challenge the status quo. The blogging meme can be a celebration of differences as each person can “take ownership” of the transmitted blogging meme, transform it, then pass it along, unmarred and unchanged as it was the day it was created.

There is no doubt that the blogosphere is home to a unique internet culture, but as I have illustrated, while most cultures intend to propagate the status quo and similar beliefs and behaviours, blogging culture is very different. I am led to believe this as well because bloggers seem very protective of their main objective as a cultural unit, free speech that is.

For example, if social bookmarking sites remove links internally based on the fact that they did not agree with the message, bloggers show their outrage (this differs from those that are pulled because they are genuinely offensive, or adult in nature). Furthermore, it is the blogs that are the most unique and innovative that form “the leaders” and that many look to for guidance. While most other cultures promote leaders based on their ability to maintain the similarities between its members, in the blogosphere it is those that have the greatest ability to stand apart from the flock.

Blogging culture is marked by the unique mass understanding that it will be a society based on personal uniqueness and the promotion of the ideas of the individual. It is this that makes blogging so satisfying because while free speech is a nice concept that I have heard much about, and it is not as though the government is banging down my door, but seldom in a social situation do I “feel free to say anything”. But when I blog, I do.

For more about Imitation and the definition of a meme from Susan Blackmore and about the Internet and Memetics from Garry Marshall.