I’m Sick of Brands Using Game of Thrones Memes
From the U.S. President to my smart banking app, they’re ubiquitous.
I’m a woman in my mid-twenties, and I love memes.
I’m a meme connoisseur. My primary form of communication with my far-flung friends and family is memes. I follow countless meme pages, I retweet memes on Twitter. I’ve seen generations of generations of memes, propagating, birthing slightly different, self-aware children.
And one trend that I’m actually, heartily sick of, is endless and uninventive Game of Thrones memes put forth by brands.
What is a meme?
It might come as a surprise to many people that the term “meme” was actually coined way back in 1976, before me (1995), Game of Thrones (1996), or even the World Wide Web (1989).
The term was invented by Richard Dawkins, famous biologist and evolutionary theorist, to explain how genes propagated. The idea with genes is that each gene in your body (or a plant’s body, whatever) is working to make sure there will be more of it tomorrow. Most genes do this by helping you survive and make babies, which will contain that gene.
But what if you could apply the exact same principle to bits of information? To ideas? Self-propagating nuggets of data…
