Gobshite Made-up Word of the Day

I read a few blogs on a regular basis. I pop in and browse around a few others semi-regularly. But I've never been much of a joiner, and my default mode is to opt out rather than opt in. In reading the comments on some blogs, I have come across the frequent use of a word which always puts me off visiting those peoples' blogs. That word is meme.

I fucking hate that word. I have a particular aversion to words which purport to explain something that already had a perfectly good word doing the explaining, sometimes for hundreds of years. In this case, the word would be "idea."

People have always copied and adapted ideas. Blatant, unacknowledged copying has another perfectly good word: plagiarism. Ideas that get picked up and turned into some kind of social movement also have a perfectly good word: ideology.

And so on.

A new coinage (1976-vintage) says more about the people using it than it does about the phenomenon it purports to describe. These people are iPod-sporting, herd-following, fashion victims.