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Can we get one thing clear - a photo with (dubiously humorous) words on it is not a meme, even (generally speaking) in the unlikely event it has "gone viral".

The act of putting words on a photo in an attempt to be funny on the other hand is an example of a meme.

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You are correct. The proper name for these are "image macros".

Semantics.

:)

Not exactly - the definition of meme as originally coined by Richard Dawkins [1], and as has been adopted to describe internet memes [2] is pretty well understood (outsite of 4chan ;-)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_meme

Actually, you'd be surprised. 4chan pretty well understands the difference here, as a lot of their memes are the non-image-macro types. They were the ones that invented the concept of the "forced meme" and other meta-meme terminology.

Fair point: :%s/4chan/reddit/g

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