A meme hack is altering a meme

Meme

A meme is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena...

 to express a point of view not intended or inherent in the original, or even opposite to the original. The meme can be thoughts, concepts, ideas, theories, opinions, beliefs, practices, habits, songs, or icons. Distortions of corporate logos are also referred to as Subvertising

Subvertising

Subvertising is a portmanteau of subvert and advertising. It refers to the practice of making spoofs or parodies of corporate and political advertisements. Subvertisements may take the form of a new image or an alteration to an existing image or icon, often in a satirical manner...

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From Samizdata

Samizdata

Samizdata is a British group weblog. Founded on 2 November 2001 by Perry de Havilland and originally named ‘Libertarian Samizdata’, it dropped the label due to the unhappiness of editors to subscribe to a particular label....

: "Intentionally altering a concept or phrase, or using it in a different context, so as to subvert the meaning."

See also Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes is a designer and commentator in the fields of online learning and new media. Downes has explored and promoted the educational use of computer and online technologies since 1995...

, Hacking Memes (First Monday, volume 4, issue 11) for a detailed description of meme hacks.

See also

• Adbusters
  AdBusters
  The Adbusters Media Foundation is a Canadian-based not-for-profit, anti-consumerist, pro-environment organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia...
  
  
• Merry Pranksters
  Merry Pranksters
  The Merry Pranksters were a group of people who formed around American author Ken Kesey in 1964 and sometimes lived communally at his homes in California and Oregon...
  
  
• Popular culture
  Popular culture
  Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
  
  
• Cultural critic
  Cultural critic
  A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole and typically on a radical basis. There is significant overlap with social and cultural theory.-Terminology:...
  
  ism
• Reality hacking
• Schwa (art)
  Schwa (art)
  Schwa is the underground conceptual artwork of Bill Barker . Barker draws deceptively simple black and white stick figures and oblong alien ships. However the artwork is not about the aliens: it is about how people react to the presence of the aliens and Barker uses them as a metaphor for foreign...
  
  
• Veterans of Future Wars
  Veterans of Future Wars
  Veterans of Future Wars was an organization formed as a prank by Princeton University students in 1936. The group was a satirical reaction to a bill granting the early payment of bonuses to World War I veterans as articulated in their manifesto:...
  
  
• Yippies

Meme hacking is also referred to as subvertising or subliminal messaging.