# Virus of the Mind *By Richard Brodie. Seattle: Integral Press, ©1996 (Brodie's own imprint); reissued by Integral Press in 2004 and by Hay House in 2009. First-edition ISBN 0-9636001-1-7. Brodie was the main programmer of Microsoft Word 1.0 and later a self-help author. Here he popularizes "memetics", the idea that ideas (memes) replicate and evolve like genes or viruses. Ideas spread because they are good at spreading, not because they are true or good for us. The most contagious ideas push evolved "buttons" such as danger, food and sex, and he argues that people should choose deliberately which memes to program themselves with.* > **What I actually read.** The book is in copyright and there is no legal free copy. Both Internet Archive scans are print-disabled only, so I could not borrow or read them. What I did read: > - **The chapter list with 1996 page numbers**, from Syndetics (the ProQuest catalog-enrichment service), matching the Library of Congress contents note in the SFPL and Harvard MARC records. Hay House chapter pages are from Google Books' contents list. > - **Short verbatim snippets** (one line or less each) from the Internet Archive scan `virusofmind0000unse`, through Open Library's "search inside". Its copyright page shows it is the 2009 Hay House hardcover, although IA catalogs it as the 2004 Integral Press paperback. The snippets confirm the jacket warning, the three meme types, the danger/food/sex argument and a few key sentences. > - **Publisher and catalog descriptions**: Hay House, Penguin Random House, OverDrive, Audible. > - **Secondary accounts**: Brent Jesiek's 2003 Virginia Tech master's thesis on the history of memetics, which quotes the 1996 edition with page numbers; Kent Stewart's long chapter-by-chapter review (2012, revised 2024); the 1996 Church of Virus review; Mike's 2022 *Waiter's Pad* review; a 1997 Journal of Memetics list post; and Brodie's own website and interviews. > > I did **not** read the chapters. The chapter descriptions below rely mostly on Stewart's review, which follows the book's order, and I flag where a snippet or Jesiek confirms a point. Quotations come only from the snippets or as a named source quotes them, and page numbers only from Jesiek (1996 edition) or the contents lists. I give no others. Related in this vault: the source talk [[Spotify/Pixels & Priorities/High Fructose Content - J Schuh 2019]]. The word "meme" comes from Richard Dawkins's *The Selfish Gene* (1976), which is in the backlog but not yet summarized; the [[Book Summaries/Dawkins, Richard/Dawkins, Richard|Dawkins hub]] currently holds [[Book Summaries/Dawkins, Richard/Climbing Mount Improbable - Richard Dawkins|Climbing Mount Improbable]]. Howard Rheingold's [[Book Summaries/Rheingold, Howard/Excursions to the Far Side of the Mind - Howard Rheingold|Excursions to the Far Side of the Mind: A Book of Memes]] is an earlier popular use of the term. *iGen* (Jean M. Twenge), cited in the same talk, is next in the queue. ## 1. Book facts | | | |---|---| | Title | *Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme*. LC title-page transcription: "Virus of the mind : the new science of the meme / Richard Brodie" | | Author | Richard Brodie (Richard Reeves Brodie, b. 10 November 1959, Newton, Massachusetts), programmer at Xerox and Microsoft, self-help author, later a professional poker player | | First edition | "1st ed." Seattle, Wash.: Integral Press, ©1996. 251 pp., ill., 24 cm. ISBN 0-9636001-1-7 (hardcover; list price $22.00 in the SFPL record). LCCN 95079421; OCLC 33316648; LC class HM251 .B6634 1996; Dewey 302. "Includes bibliographical references (p. 231-234) and index" (LC record, via [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL823775M)). Jesiek calls Integral Press the author's own imprint, so the book was self-published | | Date | The LC record gives ©1996. Amazon and Open Library give September 1995, and Wikipedia says 1995; this was probably the pre-publication listing date. The earliest dated coverage I found is from July 1996 (Radio Curious, 31 July 1996) | | 2004 reissue | Integral Press, 2004 (©1996), 251 pp., ISBN 0-9636001-2-5 (paperback; NOBLE/Phillips Academy MARC, OCLC 57734904). Same 1996 chapter pagination per Syndetics | | Hay House editions | "1st Hay House ed." Carlsbad, Calif.: Hay House, 2009 (copyright page: "1st Hay House edition, May 2009"). xxiii + 249 pp. ISBN 978-1-4019-2468-3 (hardcover), LCCN 2008046359, OCLC 262892449; "Originally published: Seattle, Wash.: Integral Press, c1996". Ebook 15 May 2009, ISBN 978-1-4019-2600-7 (OCLC 701238950). UK Hay House 2009, ISBN 978-1-84850-127-0 (249 pp.). US paperback 15 February 2011, ISBN 978-1-4019-2469-0 (256 pp., per Penguin Random House). Large-print edition, ReadHowYouWant 2009, ISBN 978-1-4587-4320-6. **No 2004 Hay House edition exists**; the 2004 reissue was by Integral Press | | Structure | A jacket and front-page warning ("WARNING: This book contains a live mind virus…", snippet); Introduction "Crisis of the Mind"; 12 chapters; Recommended Reading; Acknowledgments; Index. The text uses boxed key points and cartoons of a character called Eggbert (Church of Virus review). Contents with page numbers are in section 5 | | Audiobook | **Yes, abridged.** Hay House, read by the author, 4 h 36 min, released 6–7 November 2009. Digital ISBN 978-1-4019-2761-5; 4-CD set ISBN 978-1-4019-2722-6. There is no unabridged recording | | Cover | [Open Library cover](https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/727102-L.jpg) (1996 edition) | **Where it came up.** - Talk: J Schuh, ["High Fructose Content: Why People Crave It"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee3BCA9FXZE), a conference talk from his time as a UX/design strategist at Sabre. It was uploaded to the Pixels & Priorities YouTube channel on 2026-07-22; the note title dates the talk to 2019. At [14:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee3BCA9FXZE&t=890s) he names *Virus of the Mind*, a "book from 1996", and calls it "the book that started the word meme". He does not name the author. At [15:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee3BCA9FXZE&t=920s) he says it "got me thinking how ideas and constructs, regardless if they are real or not, travel like viruses through our society and our thoughts" (Whisper transcript, per the vault note). He then moves on to Sturgeon's Law and the flood of social-media content. The "started the word meme" framing is wrong: see the fact-check. - Requested by Video Summaries on 2026-11-06. - Vault note: [[Spotify/Pixels & Priorities/High Fructose Content - J Schuh 2019]]. ## 2. Book resources **Reference and catalog pages.** - Publisher: Hay House: [ebook](https://www.hayhouse.com/virus-of-the-mind-3) and [audio](https://www.hayhouse.com/virus-of-the-mind-4); [Penguin Random House](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/601174/virus-of-the-mind-by-richard-brodie/), US distributor of the 2011 paperback. - Open Library: [OL3006433W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3006433W). 1996 hardcover: [OL823775M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL823775M); 2009 Hay House: [OL22684667M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL22684667M), with the chapter list; 2004 Integral Press: [OL8523611M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL8523611M). The UK Hay House edition is a separate work record, [OL16944117W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16944117W). - Google Books: [ioBbmPrmujsC](https://books.google.com/books?id=ioBbmPrmujsC) (Hay House 2009 ebook, with a limited preview and the contents list). Google blocked my automated page requests, so I read no preview pages. - WorldCat: [OCLC 33316648](https://search.worldcat.org/title/33316648) (1996); [OCLC 701238950](https://search.worldcat.org/title/701238950) (2009 ebook). - Author's site: [Meme Central](https://web.archive.org/web/2010/http://www.memecentral.com/), with a memetics FAQ and links (archived; the live site did not respond). **Free (legal).** - **No legal free full text.** The book is in copyright (1996/2009). Project Gutenberg: not applicable. - **Internet Archive lending / Open Library borrow: not available.** The scans `virusofmindnewsc0000brod` (1996) and `virusofmind0000unse` (2009 Hay House, catalogued as 2004) are restricted to print-disabled readers. Open Library's "search inside" shows short snippets. - **Libby/OverDrive: yes, ebook.** OverDrive lists the Hay House ebook (release 15 May 2009, ISBN 9781401926007) as Kindle Book, OverDrive Read and EPUB ([OverDrive 506371](https://www.overdrive.com/media/506371)). Whether your library has it varies; check in Libby. I found no OverDrive listing for the abridged audiobook. - **Hoopla: probably, ebook.** The WorldCat record for the 2009 ebook links a Hoopla copy, but I could not open the Hoopla title page to confirm it. Check in the app. - **Free related material:** Brodie's archived [Meme Central](https://web.archive.org/web/2010/http://www.memecentral.com/) FAQ; the [Radio Curious interview](https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/287716?m=false) (1996); and Dawkins's essay ["Viruses of the Mind"](http://bactra.org/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html), which shares the title idea. None of them is the book. **Paid.** - **Amazon print: yes.** Hay House paperback 2011 [1401924697](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1401924697); Hay House hardcover 2009 [1401924689](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1401924689); Integral Press 1996 [0963600117](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0963600117) and 2004 [0963600125](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0963600125), used copies. - **Kindle: yes.** Hay House Kindle edition, 15 May 2009 [B00E8SIMNW](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E8SIMNW). Goodreads also lists an older Kindle ASIN, B0020HRSZQ, for the same ISBN. - **Audible: yes (abridged).** [Virus of the Mind, B0036GTKVK](https://www.audible.com/pd/Virus-of-the-Mind-Audiobook/B0036GTKVK), read by Richard Brodie, 4 h 36 min. Also on [Apple Books](https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/virus-of-the-mind-abridged/id1754966207). ## 3. Author biography **Early life and Microsoft.** Richard Reeves Brodie was born on 10 November 1959 in Newton, Massachusetts. His father was a child psychologist. He entered Harvard College in 1977 to study applied mathematics and left after his sophomore year to work at Xerox's Advanced Systems Division in Palo Alto. There he met Charles Simonyi and worked on the Bravo X word processor for the Alto ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Brodie_(programmer))). Jesiek notes that the book jacket says he was "educated at Harvard", while Brodie himself says he dropped out to "join the computer revolution" ([Jesiek 2003](https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/04e3baab-400b-4f21-b81f-5f5a2242ad74/content), p. 37). Simonyi brought him to Microsoft in 1981; Wikipedia, citing Cheryl Tsang's *Microsoft: First Generation* (1999), calls him employee no. 77. **Microsoft Word.** In a 2008 email interview, Simonyi said of the first Word ("Multi-Tool Word" for Xenix, then MS-DOS, 1983): "The code was written by Richard Brodie, but I lead the development." Brodie: "I wrote much of Word version 1 — maybe 80%. Frank Liang wrote most of the printing code" ([VC&G interview](https://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/1165/vcg-anthology-interview-charles-simonyi-and-richard-brodie-creators-of-microsoft-word-2008)). Wikipedia, citing Tsang and others, adds that he was Bill Gates's technical assistant from 1983 and managed the "Cashmere" project that became Word for Windows. It also credits him with the idea of the combo box, the formatting ribbon and the red squiggly spelling underline. I did not check those claims against Tsang. He left Microsoft after the 1986 IPO, returned in 1991 to lead the "Omega" project (Microsoft Access, 1992), and left again in 1994 ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Brodie_(programmer))). **Self-help and memetics.** After leaving Microsoft in 1986, Brodie went looking for "why money and success didn't make me happy" and took many personal-growth courses. The result was *Getting Past OK: The Self-Help Book for People Who Don't Need Help* (1993; later Warner Books and Hay House). He says he first heard of memes from Microsoft colleagues in the 1980s (Jesiek, citing the book, p. 23). *Virus of the Mind* followed. He promoted it on the alt.memetics newsgroup, the Journal of Memetics mailing list and his "Meme Central" site, and on *Donahue* (1996) and *The Oprah Winfrey Show* (1999) (Jesiek, p. 40). Jesiek calls him "the archetypical popularizer of meme theory". Wikipedia counts Brodie and Aaron Lynch among memetics' "internalists", who held that memes are units in the brain. **Poker.** From 2003 he played on the professional poker circuit. He was a Full Tilt Poker pro ("Quiet Lion") until 2011, cashed in World Series of Poker and World Poker Tour events, and won the online World Recreational Gambling Poker Tournament in 2023. He lives in Kirkland, Washington ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Brodie_(programmer)); [Hendon Mob](https://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=22116)). His poker career is self-reported and per Wikipedia; I did not check the results databases. ## 4. Author interviews and talks - **Radio Curious, "Richard Brodie – How Ideas Travel", broadcast 31 July 1996 (29 min):** memetics and the book; he recommends Howard Bloom's *The Lucifer Principle* ([PRX](https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/287716?m=false)). Description read, not heard. - **The David Essel Show, July 1996:** a ~15-minute radio segment on the book, announced on the Church of Virus list ([churchofvirus.org](http://www.churchofvirus.org/virus.96/0949.html)). Not heard. - **Donahue (1996) and The Oprah Winfrey Show (1999):** TV appearances on "viruses of the mind", per Jesiek (p. 40) and Hay House's author note. Not seen; I did not find episode dates. - **Roy Christopher, "Richard Brodie: Meme Weaver", 2 June 1999:** a short email interview on criticism of memetics, "drugs of the mind", Dennett, and a planned novel ([roychristopher.com](https://roychristopher.com/richard-brodie-meme-weaver/)). Read. - **Journal of Memetics mailing-list posts, 1997 and 1999:** Brodie on the book's deliberate "infection" strategy and his outsider status, quoted by Jesiek (p. 40). Read as quoted. - **Benj Edwards, VC&G email interview with Charles Simonyi and Richard Brodie, October 2008 (published 2015):** on writing Microsoft Word, not the book ([VC&G](https://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/1165/vcg-anthology-interview-charles-simonyi-and-richard-brodie-creators-of-microsoft-word-2008)). Read. - **J Schuh, "High Fructose Content" (Pixels & Priorities upload, 22 July 2026):** not the author, but the source of this queue entry ([YouTube, 14:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee3BCA9FXZE&t=890s)). Vault note read. ## 5. Summary **Thesis.** Brodie calls memetics "the long-awaited scientific theory unifying biology, psychology, and cognitive science" (p. 13) and "a major paradigm shift in the science of the mind" (p. 15), while warning that "Although this book is about science, it's obviously not a scientific text" (p. 19). All three quotes are from the 1996 edition as quoted by Jesiek. His definition, adapted from Dawkins: "A meme is a unit of information in a mind whose existence influences events such that more copies of itself get created in other minds" (p. 32). "A virus of the mind is something out in the world that infects people with memes. Those memes, in turn, influence the infected people's behavior so that they help perpetuate and spread the virus" (p. 36). The argument runs: - **Memes spread by being good at spreading.** Their success has nothing to do with truth or benefit to the host. The ones that do best tap instincts evolved for survival and reproduction: "Memes involving danger, food, and sex spread faster than other memes because we are wired…" (snippet). - **Culture is filling with mind viruses.** Some evolve on their own ("cultural viruses"); others are engineered by advertisers, media, cults and con artists ("designer viruses"). - **The remedy is self-programming.** Readers should "consciously choose which memes to program ourselves with and which memes we want to spread" (p. 215). The book also enacts its own thesis. It opens with "WARNING: This book contains a live mind virus" (snippet), and Brodie calls it "my attempt to consciously spread the bundle of memes known as memetics" (p. 155, per Jesiek). **Outline.** Chapter titles and 1996 page numbers are from Syndetics; Hay House 2009 page numbers, where given, are from Google Books' contents list. Chapter descriptions follow Stewart's review unless another source is named. "Snippet" marks wording confirmed in the 2009 scan. - **Warning page and Introduction: Crisis of the Mind** (1996 p. 13; Hay House p. xiii). Memetics as a paradigm shift and unifying theory (pp. 13, 15). The book is meant to "make a difference in people's lives" (p. 18) and to "consciously spread the new paradigm of memetics" (p. 19). Brodie explains that he called this part "Crisis of the Mind" rather than simply "Introduction" (snippet), which makes the title itself an example of a "crisis" meme. Nobody joins a cult intending to be brainwashed: "Nobody ever joined a religious cult with the intention of getting brainwashed, moving to Guyana, and committing suicide" (quoted by *Waiter's Pad*; the snippet confirms "a religious cult … with the intention of getting brainwashed"). Stewart adds the stages of reaction to a new idea: complacency, ridicule, criticism, acceptance. - **1. Memes** (p. 23; HH p. 1). He first heard of memes from Microsoft colleagues (p. 23). He surveys biological (Dawkins), psychological (Henry Plotkin) and cognitive (Daniel Dennett) definitions. Memetics is "the study of the workings of memes: how they interact, replicate, and evolve" (p. 26). His own definition is on p. 32, and memes are "the building-blocks of your mind" (p. 36). A meme about memes is a "metameme". - **2. Mind and Behavior** (p. 39; HH p. 17). The three kinds of meme. **Distinction-memes** are categories and labels; money is one example. **Strategy-memes** are cause-and-effect rules of thumb, such as the driving rules in his example (snippets: "Another kind of meme is a strategy…"; "the effect of all these strategy-memes is that you avoid accidents"). **Association-memes** link one thing to another, as in Pavlovian conditioning: "Cults program their members with association-memes linking good feelings with the teachings" (snippet). Distinction-memes also act as perceptual filters, and truth depends on context. - **3. Viruses** (p. 55; HH p. 35). Biological, computer and mind viruses compared in a table (p. 56, reproduced by Jesiek as "Brodie's Analogies"). A virus is anything that "penetrate[s], copy[ies], possibly issue[s] instructions, and spread[s]" (Stewart's quotation). Cultural viruses arise spontaneously, while designer viruses are made on purpose. Culture is a "meme pool". - **4. Evolution** (p. 65; HH p. 47). Replicators against entropy. "Survival of the fittest" is "a bit misleading; it's more like abundance of the fittest" (snippet). Evolution is not engineering, and organisms carry kluges, outdated programs left over from earlier designs. Stewart notes that the book treats junk DNA as such a kluge. - **5. The Evolution of Memes** (p. 81; HH p. 65). The meme is "a replicator that uses the medium of our minds to replicate" (p. 82). Once brains could store and pass on ideas, a second, much faster evolution began. Our ancestors survived by attending to "danger, food, and sex" (snippet), so those are the primary "buttons". Stewart lists the further buttons the chapter names: - "original" memes: crisis, mission, problem, danger, opportunity; - second-order drives: belonging, distinguishing yourself, caring, approval, obeying authority; - meme-spreading memes: tradition, evangelism, faith, skepticism, familiarity, making sense. - **6. Sex: The Root of All Evolution** (p. 103; HH p. 89). Evolutionary-psychology account of mating strategies and the "sexual memes" they create: power, dominance, window of opportunity, security, commitment, investment (Stewart). Advertising's "act now" exploits the window-of-opportunity meme, and "brand loyalty" exploits commitment. Hypocrisy is explained as a mating strategy. The Introduction's snippet shows Brodie discussing "stereotypical differences between men and women". - **7. Survival and Fear** (p. 123; HH p. 111). Fear and anxiety as "hardware" instincts read through memetic "software". Altruism grows out of kin care, and there are "button-pushing memes relating to altruism" (snippet): helping children, birds of a feather, racism, elitism. Gamblers' instincts include overvaluing a longshot, "cheap insurance", playing the streaks, being stingy when down and generous when up, and playing a hunch; the index has "blackjack". The same instincts explain superstitions and urban legends (Stewart). - **8. How We Get Programmed** (p. 137; HH p. 125). Three routes of infection: - **conditioning**, or repetition; - **cognitive dissonance**, which creates pressure and then resolves it, as in high-pressure sales, hazing, boot camp and initiation ordeals; - **Trojan horses**: "The simplest example of a button-pushing Trojan horse is the advertising truism…" (snippet). The chapter also covers sales rapport, mirroring and other neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) techniques, and confidence games (Stewart). It ends with Brodie describing the book as his own attempt to spread memetics (p. 155). - **9. Cultural Viruses** (p. 157; HH p. 147). Television, news and media bias. "Cynics perennially ask why life and culture… seem to be filling up with valueless and demeaning junk rather than artistic and thoughtful content. The answer is, of course, that the valueless and demeaning junk is a better replicator" (Stewart's quotation; the snippet confirms the key words). Conspiracy theories come from our wish to make sense of things: we project intent onto things that spread by themselves. The chapter also covers panhandling strategies and the memetics of politics and lobbying. - **10. The Memetics of Religion** (p. 187; HH p. 181). Religion as a cultural virus that evolved without conscious design. It exploits tradition, heresy, evangelism, making sense, repetition, security, crisis, food, sex, problem, dominance and belonging (Stewart; the Church of Virus review gives the same list in short). The reviewer found Brodie "charitable towards religion": religions remain useful because they give people a purpose. - **11. Designer Viruses (How to Start a Cult)** (p. 199; HH p. 195). Profit viruses: Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, multi-level marketing. Power viruses: cults built on commitment to a mission plus consequences for leaving, spread by evangelism. The index includes David Koresh. Corporations use milder versions: mission statements, "golden handcuffs", initiation ordeals. Brodie predicts that designer viruses will make up a growing share of culture (Stewart). - **12. Disinfection** (p. 213; HH p. 211). Two ethical questions, "What memes should I program myself with?" and "What memes should I spread?" (Stewart). "We can either give up on the hope of having a fulfilling life and a better world, or consciously choose which memes to program ourselves with and which memes we want to spread" (p. 215). "Most people are so full of mind viruses, of externally acquired mental programming, that they don't spend much of their time and energy pursuing what they want in life" (p. 220). The "Learning Pyramid" has three levels: Level 1 is genetic programming, Level 2 is knowledge used to control it, and Level 3 is choosing your own programming and purpose. Brodie's FAQ calls Level 3 "consciously choosing the memes I allow to program me" ([Meme Central](https://web.archive.org/web/2010/http://www.memecentral.com/)). Zen is a method of de-programming, and he urges teaching children to think for themselves. - **Back matter:** Recommended Reading (p. 231), arranged by subject and including Csikszentmihalyi's *The Evolving Self* (p. 232, per Jesiek); Acknowledgments (p. 235), which thank Dawkins "for being so gracious when he discovered I had inadvertently 'pinched' the title he had previously used in an essay" (Jesiek, n. 22); Index (p. 237); in the Hay House edition, About the Author (p. 249). **Key ideas.** - **Fitness is spreadability.** A meme's success says nothing about whether it is true or good for you. - **Three meme types:** distinction, strategy and association. - **Button-pushing.** Danger, food and sex, plus a longer list of evolved drives, are what contagious content hooks into. - **Cultural versus designer viruses.** Some spread by themselves; others are engineered by advertisers, media, cults and schemes. - **Infection routes:** repetition, cognitive dissonance and Trojan horses. - **Conscious self-programming** ("Level 3") as the self-help payoff. **Reception.** - **Enthusiasts.** The Church of Virus reviewer (1996) put it in his top ten, though at first he found the style aimed at "a high-school reading level", with boxed points and cartoons. Douglas Rushkoff and Elan Moritz provided jacket blurbs; Moritz wrote that it "can do for memetics what Carl Sagan has done for astronomy" (Amazon listing). - **Sceptics.** A 1997 Journal of Memetics list post called it "more along the lines of American talk show sensationalism" and "overly subjective and opinionated". Jesiek (2003) describes it as "decidedly non-scientific and non-academic", mixing evolutionary and epidemiological language with self-help. Robert Aunger later grouped Brodie and Lynch as "prominent meme enthusiasts" (per Jesiek). - **Sales.** Brodie and Hay House say it spent over a year on Amazon's best-seller list ("52 weeks on the Amazon.com Hot 100") and was in its fifth printing by 1999. Both claims are self-reported. ## 6. Fact-check Claims are the book's as shown by snippets, Jesiek's quotations, or the named secondary source. Claims about memetics' status since 1996 come from the scholarly record. | Claim | Verdict | Evidence | |---|---|---| | The word "meme" comes from Richard Dawkins, *The Selfish Gene* (1976). The book itself says so, building on Dawkins, Plotkin and Dennett. The source talk calls it "the book that started the word meme" | **Supported** for the book's own account. **Disputed** for the talk's framing: Dawkins coined the word 20 years earlier. Wikipedia notes Richard Semon's similar term "mneme" (1904) | [Wikipedia: Memetics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics); [Meme Central FAQ](https://web.archive.org/web/2010/http://www.memecentral.com/); [vault note](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee3BCA9FXZE&t=890s) | | "The first popular book devoted to the science of memetics" (publisher's description) | **Partly supported / contested.** Aaron Lynch's *Thought Contagion* (Basic Books) also came out in 1996, and Douglas Rushkoff's *Media Virus!* (1994) popularized media "viruses" earlier. Adam Westoby's 1994 draft *The Ecology of Intentions*, which Dennett circulated to both Brodie and Lynch, remained an unpublished manuscript. Jesiek says Brodie was "one of the first" to publish a book-length treatment. In 1999 Brodie himself claimed the book "IS the seminal work on memetics" | [Jesiek 2003](https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/04e3baab-400b-4f21-b81f-5f5a2242ad74/content), pp. 35–43; [Wikipedia: Memetics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics) | | Memetics is "the long-awaited scientific theory unifying biology, psychology, and cognitive science" (p. 13), "a major paradigm shift" (p. 15) | **Disputed by the later record.** The *Journal of Memetics* (1997–2005) closed "due to a lack of quality submissions". In its last volume Bruce Edmonds argued that memetics "has not provided any extra explanatory or predictive power beyond that available without the gene-meme analogy". Scott Atran ("The trouble with memes", 2001), Dan Sperber and Stephen Jay Gould ("meaningless metaphor") reject the replicator model. Mainstream cultural-evolution research (Boyd & Richerson, dual-inheritance theory) studies cultural transmission without memes as replicators. Agner Fog (2023) argues the idea is still useful for social-media virality, while agreeing that memetics "soon lost its appeal to scientists" | [Edmonds 2005](http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/2005/vol9/edmonds_b.html); [Atran 2001](https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-001-1003-0); [Wikipedia: Memetics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics); [Fog 2023](https://www.agner.org/cultsel/what_happened_to_memetics.pdf) | | "Memes involving danger, food, and sex spread faster than other memes because we are wired…" (snippet) | **Partly supported.** Negative information gets more attention and weight than positive ("bad is stronger than good", Baumeister et al. 2001). High-arousal emotional content is shared more (Berger & Milkman 2012). Each moral-emotional word raised retweets by about 20% (Brady et al. 2017). But no study tests Brodie's specific danger/food/sex triad as the general law of cultural spread, and Berger & Milkman found *positive* content more viral than negative | [Baumeister et al. 2001](https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323); [Berger & Milkman 2012](https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.10.0353); [Brady et al. 2017](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1618923114) | | "The valueless and demeaning junk is a better replicator" (ch. 9) | **Partly supported** as a later finding about falsehood. On Twitter, false news spread "farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth", driven by novelty and by people rather than bots (Vosoughi, Roy & Aral 2018). "Junk" as a quality judgment is not measurable as such | [Vosoughi et al. 2018](https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap9559) | | Initiation ordeals and cognitive dissonance strengthen commitment (ch. 8, per Stewart) | **Supported** by the classic experiments. Severe initiation increased liking for a dull group (Aronson & Mills 1959), with a replication using electric shocks (Gerard & Mathewson 1966) | [Aronson & Mills 1959](https://doi.org/10.1037/h0047195); [Gerard & Mathewson 1966](https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(66)90084-9) | | Gamblers overvalue longshots and "play the streaks" (ch. 7, per Stewart) | **Longshots: supported** (the favourite–longshot bias in betting markets, Thaler & Ziemba 1988). **Streaks: mostly supported, with a twist.** Belief in streaks in random games such as roulette is a fallacy, but the classic "hot hand fallacy" study of basketball (Gilovich et al. 1985) was later shown to be statistically biased, and the hot hand may be real there (Miller & Sanjurjo 2018) | [Thaler & Ziemba 1988](https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.2.2.161); [Gilovich et al. 1985](https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(85)90010-6); [Miller & Sanjurjo 2018](https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA14943) | | Sales mirroring, "anchoring" and other NLP techniques as programming methods (ch. 8, per Stewart) | **Disputed for NLP; partly supported for mimicry.** A review of 35 years of NLP research found no empirical support for its core claims (Witkowski 2010). Unconscious mimicry does increase liking and smooth interactions (the "chameleon effect", Chartrand & Bargh 1999). I could not see how far the book endorses NLP | [Witkowski 2010](https://doi.org/10.2478/v10059-010-0008-0); [Chartrand & Bargh 1999](https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.6.893) | | Junk DNA as an evolutionary kluge (ch. 4, per Stewart) | **Contested / open.** ENCODE (2012) assigned "biochemical functions" to about 80% of the genome. Graur et al. (2013) argued this confused activity with function, and many evolutionary biologists still hold that most of the genome is non-functional. Regulatory elements are real but cover a minority | [ENCODE 2012](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11247); [Graur et al. 2013](https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evt028) | | "Nobody ever joined a religious cult with the intention of getting brainwashed, moving to Guyana, and committing suicide" (Intro, as quoted by *Waiter's Pad*) | **Supported with a correction of emphasis.** On 18 November 1978, 918 people died at Peoples Temple sites in Guyana. Many, including children, were poisoned or shot, and the event is now generally called a mass murder–suicide rather than a suicide | [Wikipedia: Jonestown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown); [Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/event/Jonestown-massacre) | | Prediction that designer viruses will make up a growing share of culture (ch. 11, per Stewart) | **Unverified.** It is not testable as stated. Commentators connect it to engagement-optimized social media and viral marketing (e.g. Fog 2023), but no measure exists | [Fog 2023](https://www.agner.org/cultsel/what_happened_to_memetics.pdf) | | Brodie "inadvertently 'pinched'" his title from Dawkins's essay (Acknowledgments, p. 235) | **Supported.** Dawkins wrote "Viruses of the Mind" in 1991 and gave it as a Voltaire Lecture on 6 November 1992; it was published in *Dennett and His Critics* (1993) and in *Free Inquiry*. Brodie recalls Dawkins greeting him with "Oh, you're the fellow who pinched my title!" Jesiek notes an even earlier title, Schrage's "Are Ideas Viruses of the Mind?" (1988) | [Wikipedia: Viruses of the Mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viruses_of_the_Mind); [Meme Central](https://web.archive.org/web/2010/http://www.memecentral.com/); [Jesiek 2003](https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/04e3baab-400b-4f21-b81f-5f5a2242ad74/content), n. 22 | | Author note: Brodie is "the original author of Microsoft Word" | **Supported, with nuance.** Simonyi led the project; Brodie wrote the code, "maybe 80%" of Word 1.0 by his own estimate | [VC&G 2008/2015](https://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/1165/vcg-anthology-interview-charles-simonyi-and-richard-brodie-creators-of-microsoft-word-2008) | | Spent "52 weeks on the Amazon.com Hot 100" / over a year on Amazon's best-seller list | **Unverified.** Self-reported (Hay House author note; Roy Christopher 1999); no independent list archive checked | [Roy Christopher 1999](https://roychristopher.com/richard-brodie-meme-weaver/) | | Wikipedia: "*Virus of the Mind*, Hay House, 2004, ISBN 978-1-4019-2468-3" | **Disputed.** The LC record and the scan's copyright page give that ISBN as the 1st Hay House edition of May 2009. The 2004 edition was Integral Press, ISBN 0-9636001-2-5 | [LC/SFPL record via Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL22684667M); [NOBLE record via Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL8523611M) | **Since 1996.** The word "meme" won and the science lost. Internet memes and "going viral" became everyday language, while memetics as a discipline lasted only from about 1996 to 2005. Its journal closed, its leading enthusiasts moved on (Lynch disowned the label before his death in 2005), and research on how culture spreads continued under cultural evolution, social-network epidemiology and computational social science. Those fields have confirmed parts of Brodie's practical picture: emotional and moral content spreads faster, falsehood can outrun truth, and dissonance and ritual bind groups. What they do not support is the claim that memes are true replicators, or that memetics unifies the mind sciences. ## 7. Citations and references **Works the book draws on** (from the secondary sources; I did not see the Recommended Reading list beyond Jesiek's mention): - Richard Dawkins, *The Selfish Gene* (1976) and *The Extended Phenotype* (1982); "Viruses of the Mind" (1991/1993). - Daniel Dennett, *Darwin's Dangerous Idea* (1995) and *Consciousness Explained* (1991). - Henry Plotkin's definition of the meme. - Douglas Hofstadter (named in the publisher's description). - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, *The Evolving Self* (1993). - Douglas Rushkoff, *Media Virus!* (1994); Howard Bloom, *The Lucifer Principle* (1995). **Responses and context.** - Brent K. Jesiek, *Betwixt the Popular and Academic: The Histories and Origins of Memetics* (MS thesis, Virginia Tech, 2003). - Bruce Edmonds, "The revealed poverty of the gene-meme analogy", *Journal of Memetics* 9 (2005). - Scott Atran, "The trouble with memes", *Human Nature* 12 (2001): 351–381. - Aaron Lynch, *Thought Contagion* (1996); Susan Blackmore, *The Meme Machine* (1999); Robert Aunger (ed.), *Darwinizing Culture* (2000). - Agner Fog, "Whatever happened to memetics?" (2023). **Links used in this dossier.** - Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee3BCA9FXZE (14:50: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee3BCA9FXZE&t=890s; 15:20: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee3BCA9FXZE&t=920s) - Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3006433W ; https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16944117W ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL823775M ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL22684667M ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL8523611M ; cover https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/727102-L.jpg - Open Library search inside (snippets): https://openlibrary.org/search/inside?q=%22association-memes%22 - Internet Archive (print-disabled scans): https://archive.org/details/virusofmindnewsc0000brod ; https://archive.org/details/virusofmind0000unse - LC MARC (bulk MARC on IA): https://archive.org/download/marc_loc_2016/BooksAll.2016.part24.utf8 ; https://archive.org/download/marc_loc_2016/BooksAll.2016.part35.utf8 - SFPL MARC: https://archive.org/download/marc_openlibraries_sanfranciscopubliclibrary/sfpl_chq_2018_12_24_run02.mrc ; https://archive.org/download/marc_openlibraries_sanfranciscopubliclibrary/sfpl_chq_2018_12_24_run03.mrc - Harvard MARC: https://archive.org/download/harvard_bibliographic_metadata/20220215_041.bib.mrc - Phillips Academy (NOBLE) MARC: https://archive.org/download/marc_openlibraries_phillipsacademy/PANO_FOR_IA_05072019.mrc - Syndetics contents: https://secure.syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=0963600117/toc.html&client=sfpl ; summaries/author notes: https://secure.syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=1401924689/summary.html&client=sfpl ; https://secure.syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=1401924689/anotes.html&client=sfpl ; https://secure.syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=140192722X/summary.html&client=sfpl - Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=ioBbmPrmujsC - WorldCat: https://search.worldcat.org/title/33316648 ; https://search.worldcat.org/title/701238950 - Hay House: https://www.hayhouse.com/virus-of-the-mind-3 ; https://www.hayhouse.com/virus-of-the-mind-4 - Penguin Random House: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/601174/virus-of-the-mind-by-richard-brodie/ - OverDrive: https://www.overdrive.com/media/506371 ; https://metrolibrary.overdrive.com/media/506371 - Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1401924697 ; https://www.amazon.com/dp/1401924689 ; https://www.amazon.com/dp/0963600117 ; https://www.amazon.com/dp/0963600125 ; Kindle https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E8SIMNW ; https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Virus-Mind-Science-Meme-English-ebook/dp/B00E8SIMNW - Goodreads editions: https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/353577-virus-of-the-mind-the-new-science-of-the-meme - Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/Virus-of-the-Mind-Audiobook/B0036GTKVK ; Apple Books: https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/virus-of-the-mind-abridged/id1754966207 ; LearnOutLoud: https://www.learnoutloud.com/Audio-Books/Social-Sciences/Sociology/Virus-of-the-Mind-The-New-Science-of-the-Meme/33292 - Meme Central (archived): https://web.archive.org/web/2010/http://www.memecentral.com/ ; http://www.memecentral.com/rbrodie.htm - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Brodie_(programmer) ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viruses_of_the_Mind ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown - Hendon Mob: https://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=22116 - Dawkins, "Viruses of the Mind" (text): http://bactra.org/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html - Jesiek 2003 (VTechWorks PDF): https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/04e3baab-400b-4f21-b81f-5f5a2242ad74/content - Stewart review (2024): https://bdeb2.blogspot.com/2024/12/virus-of-mind-new-science-of-meme-book.html - Church of Virus review (1996): http://www.churchofvirus.org/virus.96/0529.html ; David Essel Show notice: http://www.churchofvirus.org/virus.96/0949.html - Journal of Memetics list post (1997): http://cfpm.org/memetics/old/1167.html - *Waiter's Pad* review (2022): https://thewaiterspad.com/2022/08/08/virus-of-the-mind-book-review/ - Radio Curious (PRX): https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/287716?m=false - Roy Christopher interview (1999): https://roychristopher.com/richard-brodie-meme-weaver/ - VC&G Simonyi/Brodie interview: https://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/1165/vcg-anthology-interview-charles-simonyi-and-richard-brodie-creators-of-microsoft-word-2008 - Edmonds 2005: http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/2005/vol9/edmonds_b.html - Fog 2023: https://www.agner.org/cultsel/what_happened_to_memetics.pdf - Atran 2001: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-001-1003-0 - Baumeister et al. 2001: https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323 - Berger & Milkman 2012: https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.10.0353 - Brady et al. 2017: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1618923114 - Vosoughi, Roy & Aral 2018: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap9559 - Aronson & Mills 1959: https://doi.org/10.1037/h0047195 - Gerard & Mathewson 1966: https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(66)90084-9 - Thaler & Ziemba 1988: https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.2.2.161 - Gilovich, Vallone & Tversky 1985: https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(85)90010-6 - Miller & Sanjurjo 2018: https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA14943 - Witkowski 2010: https://doi.org/10.2478/v10059-010-0008-0 - Chartrand & Bargh 1999: https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.6.893 - ENCODE 2012: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11247 - Graur et al. 2013: https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evt028 - Britannica, Jonestown: https://www.britannica.com/event/Jonestown-massacre