The meme meme

I had never heard of memes until about two years ago. At the time, I was reading posts on a Philmont-related listserve and somebody was going on about the transmission of memes. I found the term annoying at the time, and continue to do so. It seems like many people think memes are contagious and use the term to refer to intellectual ideas they believe are contagious. Anyway, I’ve never seen a good take down of the meme idea until today when I went over to catch up on Mike the Mad Biologist’s blog and saw this link. Read it and tell me that the meme meme isn’t just a bad idea.