Memer

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person involved in the creation, sharing, or promotion of amusing digital content, typically represented through images or text, that is intended for widespread enjoyment and engagement
2. An individual who creates or disseminates humorous digital material, often in the form of images or texts, and aims to entertain others through these memes
3. A person who engages in the production or distribution of comedic online content, typically utilizing visual or textual formats to foster amusement among viewers

Etymology: "Memer" is a plain formation: the noun "meme" with the agentive suffix "-er," meaning one who does something, so a memer is someone who makes or spreads memes. The suffix is ancient in English, descending from Old English "-ere," and it attaches freely to nouns and verbs to name a person who practices an activity, as in "baker" or "writer." The base word has its own story. "Meme" was coined in 1976 by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene," where he proposed it as a unit of cultural transmission, shortened from Greek "mimeisthai," meaning "to imitate," and chosen to rhyme with "gene." Dawkins's sense of an idea passed from mind to mind is a long way from the image macros and short clips that the word now mostly names. That shift is what the suffix was attached to. Once "meme" came to mean a piece of shareable internet humor, "memer" followed naturally as the name for the people producing and circulating it.

Synonyms: meme creator, meme sharer