A page about your topic

Meme" is derived from the ancient Greek word "mimema", which means "something imitated". The modern version in the English language was created in 1976 by evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins (the same guy who wrote the bestselling book The God Delusion). He describes a meme as a cultural thing that is passed from person to person through communication. It is part of cultural evolution, as a counterpart to the gene that is part of biological evolution. According to Dawkins, memes can be ideas, thoughts, catchwords, and much more; and yeah, he isn't okay with the modern use of the word.Based on the very broad definition made above, this answer may be surprising. It started with an inside joke, or at least what was considered a joke at the time, and a very simple smiley. The image was created in Usenet, a separate, prehistoric form of the Internet. In Usenet, people exchanged information in pure text form. This form of communication often led to misunderstandings in discussions, as one did not know whether the other person meant what was written seriously or not. For this reason, Scott E. Fahlman, an American computer scientist suggested to place ;-) behind entries that were meant as jokes. His original message was only found in 2002 on an old backup tape.