A meme is an idea, joke, behavior, or some other element of culture that's passed from person to person, like a gene.
Professor Richard Dawkins first coined the term "meme" in the book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins combined the word "mimeme", or "something imitated" in Greek, with the word "gene".
He recognized that the spread of ideas throughout a culture is like the spread of genes. They both move from person to person, mutate, and while the good ones survive, others are forgotten and die.
But the word meme can also refer to short video or audio clips, popular quotes, or other viral content that's easy to imitate.
Here are some examples of programming memes:
