Memes - where the hell do they come from?

I have no direct experience with 4chan, but I do have extensive experience with Gaia's General Discussion, which is considered to be a 4chan filled with mods who (in vain) try to keep it from being a Chan.

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Personally, I get the feeling that Gaia posters are all also 4chan posters, and that's how come 4chan developed into such heavy idiocy... it's a shame too because as 4chan went down, the cancer spread to neighboring sites, where I've feared to even tread lately.

I wouldn't really call it a hivemind. More like a high school filled with (mostly immature) kids jockeying for popularity. I personally think most people on 4chan are just being stupid, and their whole argument against Gaia's Extended Discussion is "ED is filled with retards pretending to be intellectuals, and 4chan is filled with intellectuals pretending to be retards." Encyclopedia Dramatica has a long section on the memes, but also a very long one on the failed memes.

Basically, 4chan's /b/ is trolls trolling trolls. I think the fact that that is even possible is funny.

My personal impression is there IS a source to each meme, kinda like a tiny snowball rolling down a mountain. If 4chan takes a liking to it, it is spammed to retarded proportions, if 4chan doesn't, it doesn't. That's why 4chan got epic butthurt when Gaia's admins started stealing Chan memes (ceiling cat, longcat, orly, etc.) and making them into items. Which is in itself retarded, because they claim to be PG-13 but they officially recognized memes which are usually replicated in the background of someone getting his head blown off or hung from a noose.

Everything starts from something. What I meant by the "copies without an original" is that as a meme becomes identified as a meme, it becomes essentially impossible to cite a specific source on it. Who was the first one to post anon as being a well dressed person with green skin? Who was the first one to post longcat? Who was the first person to post tacgnol? Who was the first to imply that Milhouse was a meme? Who was the first to assert that he is not?

With all these things floating around, it becomes easy for a meme to be picked up without the meme being identifiable as coming from any source. Other times, memes might come together as a combination of existing ideas, which they themselves may or may not be memes unto themselves.

And 4chan isn't the be-all-end-all. Memes can exist within subcommunities as well. I'm sure there are more than a few memes which only apply to the Maple community (take this as a challenge to identify them), I know that another forum I frequent has a number of unique memes, although, to be honest, a smaller selection like that makes it a lot easier to identify the source of a meme (most of them can be traced to a single post or thread from a long time ago). Then there are the things which have popped up uniquely first on Youtube. Those are memes as well, even if they reach fame via message board postings of the Youtube video moreso than Youtube on its own. Then there are things which exist outside the realm of 4chan directly which people flock to regardless, things like tubgirl or goatse.

ps bonus points to everyone for not going "OMFG RULES 1 AND 2". This is the sign that you are not a retard.