I have evidence that the word “meme” was used for decades at the University of Chicago before the fraud Dawkins stole and hid the rightful credit for it. This, although I have shared it with Harvard scholars, has remained hidden (even the OED would be embarrassed to admit their rank error). The origin is clear. A scholar called Leonard Bloomfield who the hypocrite show business cheat Dawkins names, but does not properly credit (he did very slightly alter its meaning through his awful imbecile metaphor book), pretending to have wholly altered the image born by his feeble-minded coin. 'Sblood!
Dawkins, knowing nothing about the Catholic Church, the lone origin of (European) science (now planetary), distorting in every case its positions and teachings (having, of course, never studied them at all), has spent a lifetime spreading disinformation to a mass of human beings, lacking as one is in free time, due to the necessity to earn a living, without endless time to study for decades the sources and see his foul lies.
This is said from the sheer point of view of true intellectual probity. And the absolute disgust in sham despicable demagogues with infinitely negative appeal to reason.
there is nothing objectionable in memetics until the theorists begin treating meme identity, property and transmission as something analogous to genetic identity, property and transmission. the strongest argument against the meme theory would be to show how its wrongfully reductionist, reducing the selective pressures that effect memes to a dynamic which simply doesn’t exist for them. for genes, identifying phenotypes that either contribute or not to the survival of the host is not something biologists can be mistaken about. but memes, which are really synonymous to ‘concepts’, can’t be identifiable with causal efficacy; one cannot liken an acausal phenomena such as the idea of ‘god’ to a force that directly influences the selective pressures which exist for the people (hosts) that transmit the idea. this is to say, because ideas are epiphenomenal (unlike genes), they cannot be said to play a causal role in the actual genetic change of the host. the meme would neither contribute to, nor jeopardize, the constitution of the host, and could be modified (e.g., change the god from zeus to the flying spaghetti monster) without making any difference. but if you modify a gene, you’ll observe very real changes in the response to selective pressures in the environment.
it is the benign ‘reprogramability’ of memes without any real consequence that makes them a less important point of interest in studying human and cultural evolution. it is also the fact that memes can be spontaneously learned - a culture that hasn’t before used tools can be immediately taught how to make and use them - that makes meme development more contiguous to artificial selective pressures of transmission, than genes.
finally, entire memeplexes can be manipulated in a matter of seconds. with a few properly placed words, you can radically change a meme unit set. a well crafted argument can turn a theist into an atheist at the snap of a finger, or a ‘selfie’ enthusiast into someone who now thinks it’s silly. so one has to ask; how efficacious was the meme set if it is so easily disposed of.
What you cited is exactly the lie I am referring to. Although, it appears in much more serious sources, and on more important lips, than the wikiarticle with which I am, of course, familiar. What a bore idiotic replies are! What demands they make without effort or sense.