Agreed, but people have forgotten what the word "meme" was originally meant to mean. It means that ideas can spread, and mutate, just like genes. An example that Bulbasaurus is getting at, I think, isn't so much "violent video games encourage violence" so much as, say, the Valley Girl phenomenon of the 1980s. Valley Girl speak spread because of one fucking song by that Zappa kid, and it was originally meant to make fun of california airheads who actually did say crap like "like" every other word and "gag me with a spoon". That song hit, and suddenly every dumb teenager was talking like that, and then it spread, like an infection from there. (Oh, and the television show Square Pegs helped with that, too.)

I remember Sesame Street coming under fire because of its "new" way of teaching kids - with short, fast segments that jumped around from topic to topic, and critics claimed that this would have a TERRIBLE effect on the first generation of kids subjected it (that would be Generation X), including shortened attention spans ... two generations later, and now you see shows that are patterned after Sesame Street ....

And as for people losing their distinction between reality and fiction? Yes, they're the same people who automatically take metaphor literally, and turn fan fiction characters into pagan gods.

Agreed, but people have forgotten what the word "meme" was originally meant to mean. It means that ideas can spread, and mutate, just like genes. An example that Bulbasaurus is getting at, I think, isn't so much "violent video games encourage violence" so much as, say, the Valley Girl phenomenon of the 1980s. Valley Girl speak spread because of one fucking song by that Zappa kid, and it was originally meant to make fun of california airheads who actually did say crap like "like" every other word and "gag me with a spoon". That song hit, and suddenly every dumb teenager was talking like that, and then it spread, like an infection from there.

I remember Sesame Street coming under fire because of its "new" way of teaching kids - with short, fast segments that jumped around from topic to topic, and critics claimed that this would have a TERRIBLE effect on the first generation of kids subjected it (that would be Generation X), including shortened attention spans ... two generations later, and now you see shows that are patterned after Sesame Street ....

And as for people losing their distinction between reality and fiction? Yes, they're the same people who automatically take metaphor literally, and turn fan fiction characters into pagan gods.