• ripcord@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Wait, is any image now a meme? This isn’t a comic strip, in Comic Strips?

      • MindTraveller
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        5 months ago

        Always has been. A meme is a self replicating unit of information. The meme exclusionists are just engaged in historical revisionism.

          • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Not really, no.

            A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme

            The comic strip format could be characterized as a memetic style of communication that has spread by imitation from person to person.

            Such is not true of ferns, for example.

      • OtterA
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        5 months ago

        A lot of comic strips do end up as memes

        I’d say that it only “becomes a meme” once it’s being shared around with small modifications, but when you see a comic for the first time then you might not know if that has happened already or not?

        Edit, it’s now a meme

      • samus12345@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Originally, no, this wouldn’t have qualified as a meme, but now it pretty much just means “any image that’s shared online for the purpose of entertainment”.

      • Farid@startrek.website
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        5 months ago

        The definition is very vague now. And it definitely applies to any humorous images being spread using social media. And comics fall into that category.