The continuing rise of the "meme" meme

In 2011, I declared 2011 to be the year of the meme - showing graphs of the "meme" meme over time as evidence.

Later, in my 2011 book on memetics I published a graph showing the explosive growth of the "meme" meme over time.

Rounding off 2015 seems like an appropriate moment to revisit these graphs. Here are up-to-date versions:

History of "Meme" searches (with news information)

History of "Memes" searches (with news information)

The spectacular growth of the "meme" meme has continued. The term "meme" has long eclipsed the term "gene" on the internet - a sign of the coming memetic takeover. The popularity of the term "meme" bodes well for the future of memetics, I think.