Phylomemetic Tree of Internet Memes (Neo-Lamarckian Model)

"The externalist theory of memes, which posits that memes exist independently of minds, becomes much more relevant as the focus of Internet Meme culture moves on from Pre-Irony into Irony and beyond. The memotypes spread cybernetically; their constituent memes ideated by brains, encoded and spread through the Internet as objects, to be decoded by other brains. The internalist theory (that memes exist only as features within human brains which spread from person to person via cultural exchange) quickly loses ground. For memes to spread, it is not necessary that everybody is in on the joke—hence the disparity in the dominant evolutionary strategies and pattern in the Mainstream and the Underground (Darwinian and Lamarckian, respectively) as shown in the Neo-Lamarckian model. "