It was Richard Dawkins who gave us the word and concept of 'meme' in his book The Selfish Gene, to explain how cultural information is spread. The internet usage is one sub-set of memes. The word has been adapted to describe the cartoons or visual jokes on the internet accompanied by textual comment.
Meme describes the way cultural trends are disseminated and adopted across peoples, without any genes being involved. It's the rapid dissemination of an idea or behavior, even. such matter being known, if not adopted, through imitation. However, the germ is constantly varied and added to; like a gene, a meme can replicate, mutate and evolve. So we have black meme culture, fake news culture and so on.
