I still disagree. The variation with selective retention is the Twitter post being screenshotted rather than hyperlinked to i.e. the context, comments, likes, retweets, etc have been lost, the text retained, but instead mutated into pixels to be shared visually. Copied (the text), varied (into image), selected (context and source disregarded). The image has been shared across multiple different platforms, and is spreading as it is influencing cultural ideas and, potentially, behaviors. It has propagated through imitation and replication.
This is memetics at work. A screenshot of something shared to wider social circles is, much to many’s chagrin, a meme.
I understand the disconnect; the other commenter likely first encountered “memes” as entertaining images with text over them.
You’re not at all wrong and I think that’s one of the many reasons why memetics has been widely criticised. I think it had its place in the 70s while selfish replication / kin selection was being explored and popularized but I think it’s been widely discredited at this point.
I know I was arguing the definition of a term but I’m truth, I don’t personally subscribe to the overall theory (Dawkins did write the book almost half a century ago at this point!). The “meme” is a bit of pseudoscience to vaguely articulate the propagation and proliferation of ideas/culture.
You should check out The Social Conquest of Earth if you’ve not already. It doesn’t have a compelling descriptor but it does shine a light on how natural selection doesn’t take place at purely the gene level. In a sense, we shouldn’t focus on the unit of the meme but instead the mechanisms around it.
I’ve really appreciated this little debate; you’re clearly a bright person!