Memetic behavior does not share language across sectors but boy does it have presence.
Resistance + Critical thinking boxes are defense the others offense to move men to action
Core Memetics Terms
Meme – A unit of cultural information that spreads from person to person (coined by Richard Dawkins, 1976)
Memeplex – A group of memes that work together and reinforce each other (like a religion or political ideology)
Memetic engineering – Deliberately designing ideas to spread effectively
Memetic fitness – How well-suited a meme is to replicate and spread
Virality – The capacity for rapid, exponential spreading
Transmission vector – The medium through which a meme spreads (social media, word-of-mouth, etc.)
Replicator – Any information pattern that copies itself (memes, genes, etc.)
Resistance & Opposition Terms
Counter-meme – A meme designed to fight another meme
Anti-meme – Information that resists being known or remembered
Memetic immunity – Resistance to accepting certain memes
Cognitive inoculation – Pre-exposing people to weak arguments to build resistance
Debunking – Actively refuting false memes
Fact-checking – Verifying or disproving memetic claims
Memetic antibody – Ideas that neutralize harmful memes
Steelmanning – Presenting the strongest version of an opposing idea (opposite of strawmanning)
Spread Dynamics
Going viral – Achieving exponential spread
Memetic cascade – Chain reaction of meme transmission
Tipping point – Critical mass where a meme becomes self-sustaining
Network effects – When a meme becomes more valuable as more people adopt it
Memetic drift – Gradual changes in a meme as it spreads
Mutation – Variations that emerge as memes are copied
Selection pressure – Environmental factors favoring certain meme variants
Horizontal transmission – Spreading between peers
Vertical transmission – Passing from generation to generation
Psychology & Cognitive Science Terms
Cognitive bias – Mental shortcuts that affect which memes we accept
Confirmation bias – Preferring information that confirms existing beliefs
Availability heuristic – Overweighting easily recalled information
Anchoring – First information received disproportionately influences thinking
Salience – How noticeable or attention-grabbing something is
Stickiness – How memorable an idea is (from “Made to Stick”)
Earworm – A catchy tune that gets stuck in your head
Thought-terminating cliché – A phrase that shuts down critical thinking
Semantic stop sign – A word/phrase where people stop asking “why?”
Applause lights – Statements designed to trigger automatic approval
Curiosity gap – Creating desire to know missing information (clickbait uses this)
Narrative transportation – Being absorbed into a story, making it persuasive
Social proof – Following what others do/believe
Information Warfare & Propaganda
Disinformation – Deliberately false information spread to deceive
Misinformation – False information spread without malicious intent
Malinformation – True information used to cause harm
Propaganda – Information designed to promote a particular viewpoint
Astroturfing – Fake grassroots movements
Gaslighting – Making people doubt their own perceptions
Narrative warfare – Competing to control the dominant story
Memetic warfare – Using ideas as weapons
Info-ops (Information operations) – Military/intelligence term for influence campaigns
Psyops (Psychological operations) – Military psychological manipulation
Active measures – Soviet term for influence operations
Dezinformatsiya – Russian term for disinformation
Communication Studies Terms
Framing – How information is presented affects interpretation
Priming – Earlier information influences later interpretation
Agenda-setting – Media determining what topics people think about
Spiral of silence – People suppress minority opinions, making them seem rarer
Echo chamber – Environment where beliefs are amplified and reinforced
Filter bubble – Personalized information limiting exposure to different views
Epistemic bubble – Lacking exposure to other viewpoints
Two-step flow – Ideas spread from media to opinion leaders to general public
Diffusion of innovations – How new ideas spread through populations (Rogers’ theory)
Adopter categories – Innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards
Marketing & Advertising
Viral marketing – Marketing designed to spread organically
Influencer – Person with power to affect others’ behavior
Brand evangelist – Customer who voluntarily promotes a brand
Word-of-mouth (WOM) – Organic person-to-person recommendation
Buzz marketing – Generating excitement and conversation
Guerrilla marketing – Unconventional, attention-grabbing tactics
Astroturfing – Fake grassroots enthusiasm
Native advertising – Ads designed to look like regular content
Engagement – How much people interact with content
Reach – How many people are exposed
Impressions – Number of times content is displayed
Conversion – When someone takes desired action
Internet & Digital Culture
Copypasta – Text repeatedly copied and pasted
Shitposting – Deliberately low-quality or ironic content
Ratio – When a reply gets more engagement than the original post
Quote-tweet dunk – Mocking someone by sharing their post with commentary
Dogpiling – Mass coordinated criticism of someone
Brigading – Coordinated group invasion of a space
Astroturfing – Coordinated fake grassroots activity
Sockpuppet – Fake online identity
Bot – Automated account spreading content
Troll – Person deliberately provoking reactions
Ragebait – Content designed to anger people into engaging
Engagement farming – Creating content solely for metricsAlgorithmic amplification – Platform algorithms boosting certain content
Resistance & Critical Thinking
Media literacy – Ability to critically analyze information
Digital literacy – Understanding how digital information works
Prebunking – Preemptively debunking before exposure
Lateral reading – Verifying by checking multiple sources
SIFT method – Stop, Investigate source, Find better coverage, Trace claims
Steel-manning – Addressing the strongest version of an argument
Socratic questioning – Using questions to examine ideas critically
Epistemic humility – Acknowledging limits of one’s knowledge
Intellectual honesty – Fairly representing evidence and arguments
Bad faith – Arguing dishonestly or without genuine belief
Good faith – Arguing honestly with genuine intentions
SCP Foundation & Fiction Terms
Memetic hazard – Information that harms those who perceive it
Cognitohazard – Information dangerous to know
Infohazard – Information that causes harm when known
Antimemetic – Self-censoring, unmemorable information
Memetic kill agent – Information that kills or incapacitates
Memetic vaccine – Protective exposure to weakened hazard
Class-A amnestic – Fictional memory-erasing drug
Containment protocol – Procedures to prevent spread
Academic Fields
Memetics – Study of meme evolution and spread
Cultural evolution – How cultures change through information transmission
Epidemiology – Study of disease spread (applied to ideas)
Diffusion studies – How innovations spread through societies
Social contagion – Spread of behaviors/emotions through populations
Information theory – Mathematical study of information transmission
Semiotics – Study of signs and symbols
Rhetoric – Art of persuasive communication
Cognitive science – Study of mind and intelligence
Behavioral economics – How psychology affects economic decisions
Related Biological Metaphors
Viral – Spreading like a virus
Contagion – Disease-like transmission
Vector – Carrier of infection/informatio
Host – Person carrying and spreading a meme
Reservoir – Source maintaining meme existence
Carrier – Person transmitting without symptoms/belief
Incubation period – Time before meme manifests/spreads
Outbreak – Sudden rapid spread
Epidemic – Widespread occurrence in a population
Pandemic – Global spread
Herd immunity – Enough resistance to prevent spread
Pathogen – Disease-causing agent (harmful meme)
Symbiosis – Mutually beneficial meme relationship
Parasitism – Meme benefiting at host’s expense
Counter-meme – The most common term. This is a meme specifically designed to combat or neutralize another meme. For example, fact-checking content that debunks misinformation, or a counter-narrative that undermines a viral idea.
Meme antibody – Sometimes used metaphorically, drawing on the biological analogy where antibodies neutralize pathogens.
Debunk or rebuttal – In practical contexts, simply the counter-information that stops a false meme from spreading.
Inoculation – From “inoculation theory,” this refers to pre-emptively exposing people to weakened versions of bad arguments so they develop resistance to persuasive misinformation.
Memetic hazard countermeasure – Used in fiction (like SCP Foundation) for specific protocols to stop harmful ideas.
Unlike “anti-meme” (which describes something inherently unmemorable), a counter-meme is still a meme itself—it spreads easily, but its purpose is to neutralize another meme. Think of it like a viral video debunking a conspiracy theory: it uses memetic properties (catchiness, shareability) to fight another meme.
