Web3 Reading Series (1): From Cultural Genes to Memecoin

"It is good to read books, but do not seek deep understanding; whenever you have an insight, you can happily forget about food." (The phrase "do not seek deep understanding" used by Tao Yuanming here has a meaning that is completely different from the modern interpretation, which is just right to open the topic.)

In our era of the internet, there is a peculiar phenomenon: the speed at which words spread is always much faster than people's understanding of them. By the time they become popular, their original meanings have often been dissolved, distorted, or even completely changed. "Meme" has become a cat and dog meme, PUA is equated with "emotional blackmail," and the "dark forest theory" is used to describe the survival of the fittest in the cryptocurrency world... The origins of these words actually have significant backgrounds.

In this series, we will delve into the true meanings and evolutions of them in an accessible way.

In the context of the Chinese internet, "meme" is almost synonymous with "meme image." However, the origin of this term is actually unrelated to the internet. It comes from the concept proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1976 in "The Selfish Gene," used to describe how culture, ideas, and customs can replicate and spread through imitation, much like genes. I first read this book shortly after the Chinese translation was published, almost twenty-five years ago. The essence of a meme is not "funny," but rather "replicability," "transmissibility," and "evolvability." Even the word "meme" itself is a combination of the Ancient Greek word mimeme (imitation) and the English word gene, and this naming in itself suggests its biological analogy background.

This term was born in 1976, more than twenty years before the internet became widespread. Dawkins' "meme" can be a sentence in a book, a melody in a song, the artistic conception in a painting, or a scene in a movie. "Looking back at the desolate place, returning, there is neither wind nor rain, nor sunshine," Su Dongpo's words have been passed down for a thousand years, relying not on genetic inheritance, but on human imitation and dissemination. Therefore, poetry can be a "meme," and philosophical thoughts and scientific theories can also be "memes." Good memes can be passed down, while mediocre memes will be eliminated by the times—this is the cultural level of "survival of the fittest."

In the internet age, the speed of replication and evolution has been amplified to the extreme. Every meme we forward today, every catchphrase we quote, is part of meme transmission, only the medium has changed from word of mouth and printed text to global instant connectivity.

This is also why in the world of cryptocurrency, "memes" have given rise to a brand new financial phenomenon: memecoins. Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Pepe, and even a series of tokens associated with different animals essentially may not have a strong technological foundation or complex economic models; their value largely comes from community consensus and the continuous replication of cultural symbols. The price of memecoins is extremely volatile, but their method of dissemination is no different from classic memes: as long as the community can keep it visible, imitated, and discussed, it can gain tremendous attention and capital inflow in a short period of time. Memes here complete a crossover from cultural symbols to financial assets; what is being replicated is not just humor, but also market value and wealth. However, like genes, memes and memecoins also face survival of the fittest; not all memes and memecoins can endure for a hundred years, so careful analysis is still required when investing.