What Does it All Meme?

I've heard and seen the word "meme" with alarming frequency. A meme is an idea, symbol, or practive that spreads through society, like "making fire," or "smoking is cool." It is a neologism coined by Richard Dawkins in a book called The Selfish Gene published in 1976. I won't paraphrase the entire wikipedia entry. I am a late comer to the word myself. I think the first time I saw it was a month or two ago when I was reading a book called Glut which was about the history of information systems.

Now it seems I am seeing it in news stories, I am hearing it on podcasts, and I think I even heard someone use it at work. I think I have mostly heard it used in the slang version of "meme" which is an "Internet meme," or an idea, or almost anything else, that spreads quickly across the Internet, like a viral video. Maybe we needed a word for that, but I don't think I like "meme." I don't like the way it sounds, so I don't know if I can endorse the meme of using the word "meme."