The Complete Idiot's Guide to Memes [Paperback]

John Gunders Ph.D. (Author), Damon Brown (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 5, 2010 | Series: The Complete Idiot's Guide

The ways of memes.

Memes are "viruses of the mind"-symbols, ideas, or practices that are transmitted through speech, gestures, and rituals. Understanding how symbols like the peace sign or ad slogans like "Where's the beef?" or viral videos become part of our common culture has become a primary focus of sales and marketing companies across the globe. The Complete Idiot's Guide(r) to Memes explains how memes work, how they spread, and what memes tell us about how we make sense of our world.

?First book to cover all types of memes, including viral memes in the digital age

?Features the Most Influential Memes in History and the Ten Biggest Internet Memes

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Alpha (October 5, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1615640355
• ISBN-13: 978-1615640355
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,572,084 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Damon Brown is a freelance writer who has contributed to more than 50 publications and covers technology for Playboy, WIRED, and Sync. He also writes for the music publications SPIN and The Source.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Alpha (October 5, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1615640355
• ISBN-13: 978-1615640355
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,572,084 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Not just for idiots December 22, 2011

By Tim Tyler

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I approached this book with low expectations. My self esteem usually prevents much involvement with the "Idiot's Guide" series of books.

However, my initial reaction to the book was pleasant surprise - the book actually has some interesting and useful content. It is organised into neat sections - which makes the book easy to scan and find things in. The contents and index are comprehensive.

My second reaction was not so positive - I quickly found some mistakes.

However, to start with an overview of the contents.

The book starts out with an introduction. It gives a definition of a meme and then continues by saying:

Maybe a way to clarify the definition is to determine what isn't a meme.

It lists three disqualifying criteria:

* A meme must be original;
* A meme must be digestible;
* A meme must be easily understood.

Alas, the first and third are wrong, and the second is pretty debatable.
Then there's a chapter on the science of memetics. This gives incorrect definitions of the concept of "hook", "vector" and "host". It uses the conventional bait/hook distinction - but says that the "hook" is what attracts us to memes - which is wrong. It claims that "people are not vectors" - which is contrary to standard usage in epidemiology. It says "hosts" are those that send memes - while it is better to picture hosts as meme recipients.

Then there's a section on how memes spread - broken down into chapters about verbal transmission, transmission over the internet and marketing.

Then there's a big section about memes in action - which covers lots of different sorts of memes in more detail: pop culture, technology, philosophy, pornography, religion, politics.... This section is one of the most boring parts of the book.

Then there's a miscellaneous section, which deals with memeplexes, retromemes, doomsday memes, hoaxes, scams, and urban ledgends, dormant memes and toxic memes. Some of this material is interesting.

The next section is about immunity, allergies, censorship and techniques for getting disinfected.

Then lastly is the section that I found most interesting - the 50-page section at the end devoted to meme science. This starts with a section about classic meme theories. It starts with Richard Semon and then skips to Cloak, Cavalli Sforza, E. O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett. Then there's a section on new meme theories. That covers Richard Brodie, Aaron Lynch and Susan Blackmore. This section is pretty strange. Aaron Lynch gets more coverage than Blackmore and Brodie put together - which is strange since Aaron Lynch's book on the subject is pretty awful - a science-free collage of armchair just-so stories. The treatment of Blackmore's work is pretty cursory and no more authors are covered. Then there's a section of alternative theories. It covers some of the criticisms of memetics. Then there are sections on E. O. Wilson, Boyd and Richerson and William Durham. These folk get a pretty small corner of the book - which seems rather unfair considering how much work they have put in. I also wondered what happened to all the other workers in the field.

The science section seemed rather out-of-date to me - and to my eyes, it didn't seem very well balanced. However, it was a pleasant surprise to see the mainstream scientific branch of cultural evolution get much coverage at all in a book about memes.

Probably the biggest problem with the book is that much of it is on the dull side. The book attempts to covers all the different sorts of memes in the world - and the audience is likely to already be aware of a lot of this material. However, though rather tedious, this is a type of content that I haven't seen anywhere else - so perhaps it needs laying out somewhere. The book shows some signs of hurried preparation and lack of research. The author embraces internalism - saying "memes can only exist in a human mind". I wish people would leave internalism alone. There's relatively little coverage of human evolution in the book. Nor is there mention of the possibility of a memetic takeover. However it is absolutely fantastic to have another whole book about memes and memetics, and it is good that the book contains a fair quantity of interesting and original material.

I do think that it's a bit of a shame that the book is in the form of an "Idiot's Guide". However, one of the book's redeeming features is that it is extremely inexpensive - or at least my copy was - so if you have a limited budget for research into memes, this is a pretty reasonable place to start. Read more ›

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A broad but shallow introduction November 19, 2011

By M. J. Farncombe

Format:Paperback

Any new book on memes is a welcome addition to my shelves, so I was very keen to get hold of this title. Memes are far more than viral videos or stupid cat jokes, and this book covers most of the types of meme that we see, from chain letters to religions. The treatment is often superficial, which it not a criticism of the authors' understanding but the nature of the series, but it is pretty comprehensive in its coverage of memetics.

I do have a number of criticisms of the book - it repackages Aristolean rhetoric without acknowledgment, it ignores the role that memes play in organisations, and completely skims over the role of memetic differences in national cultures and group cultures - national culture, for example, gets a one-line mention on page 83.

However, there are some topics that I think are better covered in here than in any other text on memetics that I've read. It covers in a number of places the difference that the Internet made in memetic transmission and does it extremely well, and the chapters on fashion and musical memes are first rate. The chapters on memetic immune systems only skim the subject, but at least this interesting topic is acknowledged.

The last section looks at the development of memetics as a science, and the parts that key contributors (Cloak, Carvalli-Sforza, Dawkins, Dennett and Blackmore) have played. It also takes an even-handed look at critics of memetics and some competing ideas such as evolutionary biology.

So while I can only give this book 7/10 for content, its 10/10 for readability makes it a great place to start if you want to learn what makes us act the way we do.