Why Memetics Failed
Why Memetic Philosophy Must Ride On
“Ideas don’t just spread because they’re true. They spread because they’re useful, they fit the terrain, and most importantly—someone’s willing to saddle up and ride with ‘em.”
Memetics had all the makings of a grand idea. It promised a unifying theory of cultural evolution, explaining how ideas spread like wildfire and mutate like a herd of wild horses adapting to new lands. Richard Dawkins, back in 1976, laid the groundwork with The Selfish Gene, framing memes as the cultural counterpart to genes, evolving through replication, variation, and selection. It should’ve taken off, should’ve found its place in the grand halls of academia alongside Darwinism, information theory, and cognitive science.
But it didn’t.
Now, I ain’t here to say memetics was dead wrong. No sir. It just never got its boots on right. It lacked traction in the scientific community, failed to build a solid methodological foundation, and got dismissed as a flashy metaphor rather than a rigorous discipline.
But here’s the thing—maybe memetics was never meant to ride in the scientific corral. Maybe it belongs elsewhere. Maybe, just maybe, memetics needs to be reborn as philosophy.
And that, partner, is where memetic philosophy saddles up.
Why Memetics Never Earned Its Badge
Memetics wasn’t just shot down—it never even made it to the duel. The academic establishment, particularly in the social sciences and psychology, dismissed it as too vague, too circular, and too focused on catchy metaphors over real, testable hypotheses.
1. Lack of a Hard Science Backbone
Memetics tried to ride into the scientific town without the tools of the trade—no solid empirical studies, no well-defined experiments, no universally accepted methods. Science favors what can be measured, tested, and replicated. Memes? They’re slippery devils, shifting and evolving faster than researchers can pin ‘em down [1].
2. Poor Integration with Existing Theories
A theory don’t survive in the wild if it don’t know how to cooperate. Memetics mostly ignored social sciences like anthropology and sociology, acting as if it were a new sheriff in town instead of working with the local knowledge. Culture, according to critics, is too complex to be boiled down to simple replication processes like genes [2].
3. The "Meme" Problem
The very word meme became a problem. It got hijacked by internet culture, turned into a joke. Now, when you say meme, folks think of cat pictures and viral TikToks, not a serious theory of cultural evolution.
4. It Relied Too Much on Metaphor
Science likes precise definitions. Memetics leaned too heavy on poetic analogies—calling memes “viruses of the mind” and talking about cultural fitness like it was a game of survival of the coolest. That’s fine for storytelling, but it don’t hold water in a hard science [3].
So, what’s a thinker to do? Do we let memetics fade into the dusty archives of “almost-great ideas”?
Hell no.
The Meme Problem Ain’t a Problem—It’s an Opportunity
Now listen here, partner. A lotta folks in the memetics world wring their hands over what happened to the word meme. Used to be, it was a noble concept—a serious theory of cultural evolution. Then along came the internet, and suddenly, meme didn’t mean a replicating unit of culture anymore. It meant cat pictures, TikTok trends, and inside jokes that spread faster than a prairie fire.
Some say that hijacking killed memetics as a serious field. But I say they’re missing the bigger picture.
The internet didn’t hijack memetics—it proved it.
And now, we’ve got a hell of an opportunity to bridge internet meme culture and memetic philosophy. In fact, that bridge is already being built.
Memes Ain’t Just Jokes—They’re Cultural Evolution in Action
Think about it. Every single day, millions of people engage in rapid, large-scale memetic evolution without even realizing it. Internet memes spread, mutate, die, and get reborn in new forms at speeds memeticists in the '90s could’ve only dreamed of.
A perfect case study? The "meme formats" that cycle through social media.
Some image—say, the Distracted Boyfriend—catches on.
People remix it, adapting it to different cultural contexts.
The variations compete for attention.
The most resonant ones survive, while the weaker versions fade.
Hell, that’s memetics in real time. It’s the purest living example of how cultural evolution works. The internet didn’t kill memetics. It took memetics out of the ivory tower and put it in the hands of everyday people.
And now, memetic philosophy has a chance to reclaim the deeper meaning of memes, not by fighting internet culture, but by working with it.
Memetic Philosophy: The Rebirth of an Idea
What if memetics was never meant to be a science? What if it belongs not in the lab but in the realm of philosophy—where ideas are wrangled, tested, and applied in ways that don’t require a microscope?
1. Culture Ain’t Just a System—It’s a Way of Being
Science deals in mechanisms. It wants to explain the world. But philosophy? Philosophy asks, what does it mean?
Memetic philosophy takes the core of memetics—its insights into how ideas spread—and expands it beyond sterile, testable models into something you can live by.
A meme isn’t just a replicator—it’s an active force in shaping consciousness. Your beliefs, your habits, your sense of self? All of ‘em are built out of memetic structures.
Memetic philosophy asks:
What makes a meme ethical or destructive?
How do we cultivate resilience against manipulative memes?
Can we consciously evolve our own memetic landscape instead of being passive hosts?
Now that’s something a cowboy can use.
2. From Hosts to Riders: Memetic Agency
Memetics framed humans as hosts to memes, passive carriers spreading ideas like a disease. But memetic philosophy flips the script—what if we’re not just hosts, but riders? What if we can choose which memes to cultivate, which to discard, and which to evolve?
This is the shift from memetic determinism to memetic agency. Instead of being at the mercy of viral ideas, we become conscious curators of our mental landscape. That’s the kind of power philosophy deals in.
3. Memetic Resonance: The Deep Structures of Culture
Memetic philosophy takes a step further, introducing memetic resonance—the idea that some memes persist across time not because they’re useful in a Darwinian sense, but because they align with deeper psychological and cultural structures.
Take myths, for example. Hero’s Journey, the Trickster, the Wise Elder—these memes ain’t just surviving by chance. They resonate with something primal in human consciousness. Memetic philosophy aims to understand and harness these resonances, shaping cultural evolution with intent rather than accident.
4. The Role of AI in Memetic Evolution
Here’s the new frontier: AI is the biggest memetic force in history. It don’t just spread memes—it creates, mutates, and distributes them faster than any human society ever could.
Memetic philosophy must tackle:
How does AI-generated culture affect human consciousness?
Can we guide AI’s role in memetic evolution instead of letting it run wild?
Are we heading toward a form of collective memetic consciousness?
Memetics alone can’t answer these questions. But memetic philosophy? Now we’re talking.
Philosophy as the True Home of Memetics
In the end, memetics failed because it tried to be something it wasn’t. It wanted to be a science, but science demands precision memetics couldn’t provide.
But as philosophy, it has a future.
Memetic philosophy doesn’t just analyze how ideas spread—it asks why they matter and how we should engage with them. It gives us tools not just to understand the memetic environment but to shape it consciously. I wrote more about that, here.
It’s about memetic sovereignty—the ability to decide which ideas we let take root in our minds and which we reject.
It’s about memetic ethics—ensuring that what we create and spread contributes to human flourishing rather than manipulation.
It’s about memetic mastery—recognizing that we are not just products of cultural evolution, but active participants in its unfolding.
Conclusion: Time to Saddle Up
Memetics didn’t fail because it was wrong. It failed because it tried to play by rules that didn’t fit. But philosophy ain’t about rigid frameworks—it’s about exploring the wild terrain of thought, carving out new paths where the old ones don’t go.
Memetic philosophy is that new path. A way to take the insights of memetics and apply them where they matter most—not just in academia, but in how we live, think, and shape the future.
So if you’re tired of just being a host for ideas, if you want to take the reins of your own memetic landscape—then welcome to the frontier.
Memetics may have stumbled, but the ride ain’t over. Not by a long shot. Join our Neuroscape Navigators X community to help us wrangle with these ideas and more.