“Mimetics as Digital Culture”

by Jacklyn Heslop | Xchanges 15.1, Spring 2020

Conclusion: The Start of a Memetic Enthymeme

If memetics, as Dawkins asserts, is the most compact portion of cultural transmission, then it deserves explication as a function of our daily lives. Internet memes are pervasive in today’s cultural landscape, but their rapid circulation makes it nearly impossible to distinguish the lines of creation and development. A single meme continues to be appropriated by others until there is little original content left within the format, but the meme can continue to infect people who send and receive it. The only requirements for being able to read and remake the meme are a familiarity with the style and an ability to reference content that would resonate with one’s intended audience, much like the enthymeme. In more than one way, the enthymeme and meme are crafted in similar ways for a particular audience to interpret. Yet, there are few formal studies on the creation of memes within the field of rhetoric, while Aristotle’s enthymeme is widely known and explored. The enthymeme is a powerful tool the speaker can employ to forge a connection with his or her audience, and if the meme helps create connections between otherwise anonymous content creators and consumers, it may be demonstrating the evolution of persuasive means in our adoption of a digital world.