I really dislike the misuse of the word “meme.”

A meme is an intentionally emulated behavior. On the Internet, that means communicating by way of a previously established form of media or quotation. Rickrolling was a meme, planking was a meme, using specific image macros (that have associated background contexts) is a meme, and so on.

Most of what people refer to as “memes” are just… well, literally anything, it seems. Twitter screenshots get mistakenly called by the name, as do text-based stories. People seem to have decided that the word “meme” just means “something I saw online,” which is incorrect.

This isn’t a case in which the actual meaning of the word can evolve, either. “Meme” refers to a specific phenomenon, and the term was originally coined by Richard Dawkins in his book “The Selfish Gene.” It’s similar to how people used to conflate schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, to the point where the former word’s incorrect definition appeared in dictionaries. Fortunately, the medical term maintained its integrity, and the popular misuse of the word didn’t make those folks any less wrong.

Anyway, memes require actions… and ironically enough, misusing the word “meme” is a meme.

TL;DR: “Memes” are not “things you saw on the Internet.”