A true meme is not an internet meme, but a cultural virus.

This concept was first proposed by British biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976. He used the term "meme" to describe the basic unit of cultural transmission, just as genes are the basic units of biological inheritance. Dawkins believed that memes are cultural information that can spread through imitation, "infecting" human brains, continuously replicating, mutating, and evolving.

Imagine how a cold virus spreads: one person sneezes, the virus is transmitted through the air to another person, and then that person passes it on to more people, ultimately sweeping through the entire office. Memes are the "viruses" of the cultural world, but instead of spreading disease, they spread ideas, emotions, values, and behavioral patterns.