• MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      Always has been. A meme is a self replicating unit of information. The meme exclusionists are just engaged in historical revisionism.

        • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Not really, no.

          A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme

          The comic strip format could be characterized as a memetic style of communication that has spread by imitation from person to person.

          Such is not true of ferns, for example.

    • Otter@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      A lot of comic strips do end up as memes

      I’d say that it only “becomes a meme” once it’s being shared around with small modifications, but when you see a comic for the first time then you might not know if that has happened already or not?

      Edit, it’s now a meme

    • samus12345@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Originally, no, this wouldn’t have qualified as a meme, but now it pretty much just means “any image that’s shared online for the purpose of entertainment”.

    • Farid@startrek.website
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      5 months ago

      The definition is very vague now. And it definitely applies to any humorous images being spread using social media. And comics fall into that category.