Memes are units of cultural transmission, Dawkins’s analogue to genes, that hop from brain to brain by imitation. They can harden into norms, identities, and shared fictions, recruit emotion and tribal defense, and behave like agents in how people protect or spread them.

Engagement-driven feeds rank by clicks and watch time, rewarding attention-seeking and performative identity. That speeds up the weak-men phase of the Hopf cycle: shallow performers rise ahead of competent people, and institutions slide toward failure faster.