PZ Myers. 2006 Jan 06. Memes gone bad. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/memes_gone_bad/>. Accessed 2006 Feb 13.

Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Friday, January 06, 2006

Memes gone bad

Not memes in the blogging sense (trivial questions with answers posted as a blog entry), but in the Dawkins sense—infectious ideas that spread through a population. Shallit is looking for the World's Worst Memes; as examples, he cites "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" and "God loves you." He's especially looking for examples of phrases that get some of their potency from rhyming.

I can think of a few I detest:

Posted by PZ Myers on 01/06 at 09:05 AM
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  1. "Real Men Love Jesus" (in other words, non-Christians are wusses, and very possibly gay)
    #: Posted by Mark Trodden  on  01/06  at  08:34 AM
  2. I don't usually go around defending Jack Sarfatti, but I think you're confusing him with Jonathan Sarfati.
    #: Posted by Matt McIrvin  on  01/06  at  08:37 AM
  3. * "My country right or wrong." Anything that encourages slavish devotion to a granfalloon.

    In the original context (as I've seen it) it's much better than that. As I recall, it continues: "...where right, to be kept right, where wrong to be put right". Not a slavish devotion, but an intelligent loyalty to one noble attempt to live out an ideal. Of course, lots of people probably only know the first bit.

    <i>* "From goo to you via the zoo." Jack Sarfati's favorite description of evolution.</i>

    Not that it matters, but I think Harold Hill (of "NASA's Missing Day" infamy) has precedence on that one.
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  08:46 AM
  4. I love "from goo to you via the zoo". I've never heard it. It's hysterical.

    Since so many people live by "everything happens for a reason" and find it *helpful*, I won't exactly add it. Or exactly not.

    "America: love it or leave it."

    I know there are a bunch of Canadian ones which I cannot think of. Oh well: too early in the AM.
    #: Posted by wolfangel  on  01/06  at  08:58 AM
  5. @wolfangel,
    I once met a man who told me he'd read a bumper sticker that said "America, Love It or Leave It," so he left.

    Also remembering what I suspect was a very, very free translation of Chuang-Tsu

    "Master, why do you teach that God is Love?"
    "To stop an infant from crying."
    "What would you teach the infant when it stops crying?"
    "No God, no love."
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  09:28 AM
  6. "America: love it or leave it."

    I'm reminded of a forum-goer who underwent a radical personality change. He was pretty much advocating repealing the establishment clause of the First Amendment, based on the fact that such a measure would get a majority vote. I told him that I'd need to review the status of religious freedom of other countries if that measure ever got on the table.

    Then he said, "Well, when it comes to religious freedom, there's no place better than America."

    Can you say "schizophrenia?" Sure, I knew you could.

    Anyway, more bad memes... Hmm...

    "It's for the best." (Because this is the only possible world, we must therefore conclude that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and everything happens for the best of all possible reasons.)

    "I'm not arguing to convince anyone." (Ow. My brain is bleeding!)

    "My karma ran over your dogma." (and replaced it with another.)

    "But it still let them be happy for a while." (The same could be said of alcohol.)
    #: Posted by BronzeDog  on  01/06  at  09:52 AM
  7. "Ends justify the means." - worst meme ever.

    I like to think of myself as a distributor of anitbiotic or antiviral memes. Example:

    "You didn't use a condom after your wife gave birth?" -normally religious guy

    "If God wants me to have another kid, you think I could stop him with a condom?" - me trying to sow cognitive dissonance

    I'm not the best at metaphors or analogies, but I like the idea of predator/prey relationships between memes.

    I like the contrary ones too, because peolpe will usually agree with both.

    "Distance makes the heart grow fonder", is rarely contrasted with, "out of sight, out of mind".
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  10:19 AM
  8. "n the original context (as I've seen it) it's much better than that. As I recall, it continues: "...where right, to be kept right, where wrong to be put right". Not a slavish devotion, but an intelligent loyalty to one noble attempt to live out an ideal. Of course, lots of people probably only know the first bit."

    That wasn't the "original context" but rather an ironic addition, much like "Jesus saves...by clipping coupons". It is generally attributed to Senator Carl Schurz of Missouri, but people had been using "My country right or wrong" long before him.
    #: Posted by Jonathan Badger  on  01/06  at  10:23 AM
  9. "Real Men Love Jesus"

    ...all night long.
    #: Posted by Morgan  on  01/06  at  10:46 AM
  10. How about anything at all about the "free market"?
    Hell, how about just the "free market" as a meme itself?
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  10:52 AM
  11. I always liked the Native-American Activist response to "Love it or leave it."

    "America: Love it, or give it back."
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  11:10 AM
  12. "Only in America.."

    Right, cause we are the only place for everything.

    "Right to bear arms"

    Lets not forget the whole 'In order to ensure...well regulated militia' part of that.

    "Just say no"
    "Abstainance makes the heart grow fonder"
    "Death tax"
    "Clear Skys Intiative"
    "Healthy Forests"

    If there is one things the GOP does it is come up with memes....
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  11:22 AM
  13. "..because they hate our freedom"
    " Better dead than red"
    " God is All Knowing AND All Powerful", but evil is the responsibility of humans.
    "Winning Hearts and Minds"
    "The Homosexual Agenda"
    "Christians are persecuted in the US"
    "Teach the controversy"
    "War on Terror"
    "War on Drugs"
    "Moral behavior requires religious belief"
    "ID should be taught in Biology, but Global Warming is junk science."
    "God is on our side"
    "Axis of Evil"
    "Where there's smoke there's fire" (See Teach the Controversy and Holocaust Denial"
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  11:28 AM
  14. How about "War on <insert abstract concept>"?
    #: Posted by BronzeDog  on  01/06  at  12:01 PM
  15. Islam is a religion of peace
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  12:04 PM
  16. Memes don't exist! Now spread the word!
    #: Posted by Jeremy Henty  on  01/06  at  12:17 PM
  17. "That's just your opinion." (when met with incontestable facts)
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  12:25 PM
  18. 'ul 'Allah Akbar ?
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  12:37 PM
  19. "Red-blooded American"
    Any variant of "They laughed at Galileo, they're laughing at me, therefore I'll eventually be proved right"
    "What you don't know can't hurt you"
    "Judicial activism"
    "Compassionate conservative"
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  12:41 PM
  20. "Red-blooded American"
    Any variant of "They laughed at Galileo, they're laughing at me, therefore I'll eventually be proved right"
    "What you don't know can't hurt you"
    "Judicial activism"
    "Compassionate conservative"
    "Partial birth abortion"
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  12:43 PM
  21. Re: "My country right or wrong..."
    I stand corrected, thank you. A Google search turns up some history (including Sen. Schurz's admirable amendment).
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  12:54 PM
  22. "Everything happens for a reason"
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  01:07 PM
  23. "Patriot Act"
    "The founders created a Christian Nation."
    "They say that it's America's fault that there's global warming, but Scotland was colder than usuall this year."
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  01:25 PM
  24. "AND THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH AND DWELT AMONG US"

    "If you really loved me you'd ..."

    "Betcha can't eat just one."
    #: Posted by Keith Douglas  on  01/06  at  01:33 PM
  25. "I will give up my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers."

    This one just gives me the creeps. I know what they're trying to say, but the vision I have is some redneck who died in a shootout, all so he could have the right to die in a shootout.

    As a guy who rides bikes a lot, it pretty much makes the hair on my neck stand every time I see a 1973 pickup with that written on the back.
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  01:49 PM
  26. "From goo to you via the zoo."

    I have two immediate responses:

    1) Cool!
    2) We all start with at least some goo. Does he not know this?

    Red-Blooded American

    I always have the impulse to respond: "Really? Let's have a look, shall we?"
    #: Posted by paperwight  on  01/06  at  01:57 PM
  27. RE: "America: love it or leave it." In the '60's we would shout back: "American: change it or lose it."
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  02:06 PM
  28. "Fair and Balanced." - Journalism reduced to a credulous popularity contest.
    "Teach the Controversy." - destroy critical thinking under the guise of promoting freedom of speech.
    "Support our Troops!" - Specifically as a rallying cry to support the war, as if you can't support the troops without supporting the war.

    In fact, that is a symptomatic meme - somewhere along the way, Orwell-style double-speak became somehow "clever" instead of "terrifying," so I guess:
    "Double-think as tool, not taboo." could be one.

    And an old one - "White Man's Burden." - Responsible for a lot of bad decisions.
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  02:18 PM
  29. Wonderfully snarky anti-meme now available on a t-shirt:

    "Abstinence is for Virgins"
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  02:28 PM
  30. "It takes two to argue." I've been party to enough angry people melting down just because I said something they didn't feel like hearing to totally believe that one. It can be awfully hard to walk away from someone who's screaming abuse at you, and everything you say to them during their rage attack will be taken as further "argument." Best thing to do is avoid the rageaholics, I guess.
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  02:50 PM
  31. "They hate us for our freedom."

    "We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here."

    "We're staying the course and turning a corner." - How can you do both simultaneously?
    #: Posted by No More Mr. Nice Guy!  on  01/06  at  03:08 PM
  32. 4 bad memes

    1) The idea that people who do bad things and get away with it will face justice after they are dead.

    2) The idea that people are forgiven for doing bad things because someone else paid the price for their sins.

    3) The idea that people who believe that someone else paid the price for their sins are somehow more moral than other people.

    4) "Kill 'em all, let god sort 'em out."
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  04:01 PM
  33. "We're staying the course and turning the corner."

    Always turning to the right, presumably.

    So, what - you walk around the building over and over, and that's progress?

    CS
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  04:01 PM
  34. Meme's are not just sayings!
    Don't get me wrong here, I would love to vote for "God kills fags dead" or even "Kill em all and let God sort em out" However, as the title says, this is asking for a Meme in the Richard Dawkins sense. I've been reading all the Dawkins and E.O. Wilson that I can get my hands on, so the meaning of Memes is fresh in my mind.

    Memes are any idea or concept that travel via the grey matter/human culture and evolve over time. For instance, the explanation of lightning and thunder is a very ancient meme that has evolved probably from warring gods a long time ago to the more modern angels bowling. Considering this, I vote for the awful memes like "I am right, and you are wrong because my God says so." or "You are different looking than me, therefore you are inferior".
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  04:13 PM
  35. Yeah, what Shawn said. Vacuous slogans are vacuous slogans, not memes. I'll take a shot:

    Events must have a reason -> there are no coincidences -> first cause/creation -> demiurge -> monotheism

    Funerary rites* -> the ancestors are still "with us" in some nebulous sense -> ghosts -> souls -> afterlife -> divine judgment

    FWIW, I'm not sure that I buy the concept of memes. It's a handy metaphor, but I'm not sure it's real in any meaningful sense. That said, the "meme" meme has taken off like a shot. It'll be interesting to see what the concept looks like in a few decades.

    *Not that I would necessarily want to go back to leaving corpses lying around.
    #: Posted by HP  on  01/06  at  04:53 PM
  36. Thanks for the clarification, Shawn, I was starting to think the same thing.

    "Dissent is unpatriotic"
    "Civil liberties should be decreased during wartime"
    "Humans are the pinnacle of creation"
    "Hard work is intrinsically virtuous"
    "Absence of God means absence of meeeeaning"
    "Every sperm is sacred" (that one's a meme, I just find the Monty Python verbalization of it to be the catchiest)
    "Permanent monogamy sanctified by a priest is the only way to live"
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  05:08 PM
  37. I never liked "Boys will be Boys." as a way of explaining away harmful and sometimes criminal acts of agression or stupidity.

    "If God had intended *blank* he would have *blanked*." usually the first has nothing to do with the last. Like if "God had intended women to fight he would have made men carry babies". I am guessing they've never heard that there is nothing fiercer in nature than a mother.

    Oh and my favorite comes from my brother "You're entitled to your opinion...even though it's wrong."
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  06:24 PM
  38. I am guessing they've never heard that there is nothing fiercer in nature than a mother.

    Someone needs to make them watch Kill Bill.
    #: Posted by BronzeDog  on  01/06  at  07:37 PM
  39. Dawn,

    I didnt know you were my sibling.

    my favorite comes from my brother "You're entitled to your opinion...even though it's wrong."


    Maybe he was one of my students.

    I also like " The beatings will continue until morale improves." Probably penned by Rummy.
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  08:32 PM
  40. I *hate* "abortion stills a beating heart."

    Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy, not the termination of a fetus. The beating of the heart is not the issue; it can beat all it wants, but not inside my body!
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  08:51 PM
  41. Actually heard a variant of this one spoken out loud, a long time ago:

    "Any damage we do to the environment doesn't matter, because if it gets too bad, God will fix everything for us".

    I like to comment about comparing mutually-contradictory memes. The one above brings to my mind:

    "Hard work is the surest way to rewards"

    So, being lazy and apathetic, so God can stop being bored answering lame prayers and re-boot an ecosystem is OK, as long as you worked really hard first?
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  08:58 PM
  42. Well, everybody's beaten me to it, so I'll just poke fun at a few of them.

    "America. Love It or Leave It."
    Me: "Agreed. Where are you going?" If they loved America, they wouldn't let it turn into this mess simply because this mess was wrapped up in patriotism.

    "Just say no"
    Why? If I say no, I don't get any sex.

    "Abstainance makes the heart grow fonder"
    So does making love. And it's more fun.

    "Death tax"
    You mean you can live forever just by refusing to pay a tax?

    "Where there's smoke there's fire"
    Where there's smoke there's a smoke bomb.

    "God is on our side"
    Then He can't be very powerful, or we'd be winning.

    "The founders created a Christian Nation."
    Really? Where? I've never heard of it before. (And it's very impressive of them, to have created two nations.
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  09:08 PM
  43. "If God had intended *blank* he would have *blanked*."

    If God had meant for us to be naked, we would've been born that way.

    If God had meant for us to have sex outside of marriage, he would've given us hormones and orgasms that were just as strong outside of marriage as inside of marriage.

    Oh, wait . . . *smirk*
    #: Posted by  on  01/06  at  09:16 PM
  44. I dunno. "Better dead than Red" sounded hilarious on the last few election days.
    #: Posted by Tata  on  01/06  at  10:54 PM
  45. For me, the worst two memes are hands-down religion and patriotism. The "whatever seemed to work for my grandfather works for me" meme is number three, because although it's very dangerous, without the previous two it's relatively harmless.
    #: Posted by Alon Levy  on  01/06  at  11:12 PM
  46. I hope these count as memes. I think they do...

    American memes:

    Freedom/America is the Freest Country in the World. In America we slobber everytime somebody says "freedom". It has resonance which far surpasses it's merit or understanding. Also, many of us forget that basic civic freedoms are available to many countries, and that we, the "freest country in the world" have a crappy record on freedom considering we had slavery and segregation, internment camps, McCarthyism, etc. Freedom is good, but so are many things.

    The United States Flag. A guy I knew who was in the marines admitted that he had gotten to the point where he would get an erection when he beheld the flag. Maybe it's because of the anthem here, but does any country get this into their flag? It's a square of flapping fabric.

    "American" I'm really sick of the word. It comes before way too many things: "American Beauty", "American Idol", "American Psycho", "American Woman", "American Movie", "American Pie", "American Girl", etc. I say we all just start subbing, "United States" now: "United States Pie". (this is a meme because it is not just the word, there is this whole magic incantation power behind that word it just pulls up all the Norman Rockwell mom & apple pie magic).

    and a bonus meme:

    Christmas. It's a load of crap for the whole family. Not because of it's religious origin, but because the only members of society who really honestly care anymore are people under the age of 8. Walking through malls from early November on is like having to survive eating nothing but Pixie Sticks for two months, it's so cloying and superficial.
    #: Posted by  on  01/07  at  01:22 AM
  47. the entire genre of persuasive tautologies--i.e., statements that have the form of tautologies, and so seem to have the logical validity of them, but gain their polemical power by changing the meaning of the terms between subject and predicate (thus losing their logical validity).
    "boys will be boys" was mentioned above; "war is war" is another.

    For some reason, people can't see that if they are valid, they are vacuous, and if they have content, they are contestable.


    E.g. "boys" as subject means roughly "male human being" and "boys" as predicate means "sociopath". It is valid, but vacuous, that male human beings are male human beings; sure they are, but so what? That doesn't explain or excuse anything. It is a substantive claim that male human beings are sociopaths, but (one hopes) the claim is not analytically true.

    Sigh.....Just as people are misled by rhyme (what sounds good in the euphonic sense sounds good in the plausibility sense), so too people are misled by the superficial appearance of logical validity. Fools will be fools....
    #: Posted by  on  01/07  at  07:03 AM
  48. Bad, seductive memes that I see on the left, right and center, and even have to fight in my own head:

    - This world is so evil and corrupt that no incremental reform can save it; when it all finally falls down, it will be in a great cleansing crisis that, however horrible, will leave it wiser and purer in the end.

    - Modern civilization has made people too soft and decadent to truly care about anything important, and more hardship would make them better people.

    - Most people are such fools that they'd be much better off if I and a few of my enlightened friends simply told them how to live.
    #: Posted by Matt McIrvin  on  01/07  at  01:09 PM
  49. I think "meme" is probably the worst meme. It reduces the complexities of words, concepts, and systems of thought down to a simple selectionist scenario, supplanting in many minds the far more intelligent and nuanced understandings of the roles of language, thought, and societal pressures to conform

    Glen D
    http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm
    #: Posted by  on  01/07  at  01:37 PM
  50. "It's just human nature." This is invariably used to justify or excuse reprehensible behaviour, never actions we usually regard as helpful. As far as I am concerned ALL human actions or thoughts are, ipso fact, part of human nature.
    #: Posted by  on  01/07  at  02:14 PM
  51. How's aboot "The government that governs least governs best"? It kinda reduces everything to one very silly dimension.rasberry
    #: Posted by LeoPetr  on  01/07  at  05:18 PM
  52. <blockquote>How about "War on <insert abstract concept>"?

    I think it was the writer Will Self who when asked about the war on drugs declared "you may as well have a war on tables".
    #: Posted by Neil  on  01/07  at  10:17 PM
  53. Oops. Normally so good at closing my HTML tags...
    #: Posted by Neil  on  01/07  at  10:18 PM
  54. I could play this game all day. Here is the "projective hypothesis" meme, which I consider the most insidious of them all:

    There is a set of universally-held human beliefs which I have correctly identified, so that anyone who disagrees with me is deceiving him/herself.

    It is the most insidious because it annihilates the possibility of learning through interaction with others. What is a human being which can't learn?
    #: Posted by  on  01/08  at  04:11 AM