The Meme Machine

84 THE MEME MACHINE
In other words, the reason we talk so much is not to benefit our genes, but to
spread our memes.
There are several ways of looking at how memes exert pressure on us to keep
talking, and 1 will consider three of them in more detail.
First, since talking is an efficient way of propagating memes, memes that can
get themselves spoken will (in general) be copied more often than those that
cannot. So these kinds of memes will spread in the meme pool and we will all
end up talking a lot.
This argument is similar to the explanation I proposed for why we think so
much – another example of the ‘weed theory’ of memes (p. 41). Silence is like a
beautifully weeded flowerbed, just waiting for your favourite plants, and it does
not stay that way for long. A silent person is an idle copying machine waiting to
be exploited. Your brain is full of ideas, memories, thoughts to be shared, and
actions to be carried out; the social world is full of new memes being created,
spread about, and competing to be taken up by you and passed on again. But
you cannot possibly speak them all. Competition to take charge of your voice is
strong – just as competition to grow in the garden is strong. Keeping silence is
as hard work as weeding.
So which memes will win in this competition to take over your voice? It may
help to ask again our familiar question – imagine a world full of brains, and far
more memes that can possibly find homes. Which memes are more likely to find
a safe home and get passed on again?
Certain memes are particularly easy to say, or almost force their hosts to pass
them on. These include bits of juicy scandal, terrifying news, comforting ideas
of various sorts, or useful instructions. Some of these have their ‘spread me’
effect for good biological and psychological reasons. Perhaps they tap into
needs for sex, social cohesion, excitement, or avoiding danger. Perhaps people
pass them on in order to conform, to be better liked, to enjoy the other person’s
surprise or laughter. Perhaps the information will be genuinely useful to the
other person. We can certainly study all these reasons (and indeed psychologists
do just that) but for the memetic argument I am proposing here it does not matter
what they are. The point is you are less likely to want to pass on some boring
thing you heard about the health of your neighbour’s rose bushes than a rumour
about what your neighbour was doing behind them. Such ‘say me’ memes will
therefore spread better than other memes and many people will get infected with
them.
The news of Princess Diana’s death in 1997 spread around the world at the
speed of light within minutes of its first announcement. People all over the
world told anyone who did not yet know. I did myself. I turned on the radio,