[theshrike79]

Yes, that's the dictionary definition of meme.

But in practical use "meme" has devolved to mean "a picture with a joke" pretty much. There may be a meme-like shared component, but mostly it's just a picture with a joke in it.

[galaxyLogic]

I think "meme" is a bit more than a picture with a joke. Of course anything can be called a "meme" but it is meaningless to do so if we discard the original conceptual meaning of "meme" altogether.

First of all a meme is something that can spread by duplication, and possibly mutate in the process. It must be like a gene in that respect.

Secondly it doesn't need to be a "joke". It must be something that TELLS us something about the world we live in, and about people around us. It has to have a message. Maybe the message is expressed in terms of a joke and yes jokes tell us something about the world. A meme might be an expression that aptly describes a recurring situation. We may not laugh at it, but inside our heads we say "yes that truly describes that situation".

A meme is like a poem, like a haiku. It catches the essence of some situation that many people encounter. It succinctly tells us a lot. Therefore it spreads because it is easy to pass on, and it has value because it tells us a lot.

There have been jokes circulating on the internet for a long time. But jokes are not "memes". Jokes are something that make us laugh, memes are something that tell us the essence of some recurring phenomenon.

[ajuc]

There are memes that aren't funny and aren't meant to be funny. Mostly political ones.

Sometimes memes were funny, then got (over)used in a particular context and now they aren't used as jokes, they just symbolize that thing. For example pepe frog.

[mr_mitm]

Looks like people are using three different definitions of "meme".

* Richard Dawkin's original definition, who invented the term "meme" in 1976, even though the idea of memes and memes itself existed before

* pictures with text at the top and at the bottom, I believe originating from the "advice dog" meme

* some well known internet joke, like the hunter2 thing from bash.org which is repeated on reddit whenever someone mentions passwords