Reshared post from +Yonatan Zunger
Some data scientists I know looked at how textual memes spread — things like “No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, post this as your status for the rest of the day.” They discovered that they do, indeed, spread and mutate much like genes do, and that certain keywords or phrases appearing within the memes (like "please post this as") significantly affect the rate at which the memes change while they spread.
Also, it appears that memes involving science fiction and zombies skew towards politically liberal niches, memes involving alcohol skew conservative, and memes involving cancer are politically neutral. So in the name of inclusiveness, let me just say: Give a zombie a good beer in order to fight cancer! Please post this into your status if you agree.
The evolution of memes on Facebook
In September of 2009, over 470000 Facebook users posted this exact statement as their status update. At some point someone created a variant by prepending “thinks that” (which would follow the individual’s name, e.g., “Sam thinks that no one…”), which was copied 60000 times.
Reminds wme of what I hate about Facebook….