People don’t engage with each other in order to exchange viruses; people exchange viruses as an excuse to engage with each other.

Observe yourself the next time you’re listening to a joke. You may start by listening to the joke for the humor - because you really want the belly laugh at the end. But chances are, a few sentences in, you will find yourself not only listening, but attempting to remember its whole sequence. You’ll do this tentatively at first, until you’ve decided whether or not it's really a good joke. And if it is, you'll commit the entire thing to memory - maybe even with a personalized variation, or a mental note to yourself to fix that racist part. This is because the joke is a gift - it's a form of social currency that you’ll be able to take with you to the next party.

At the Industrial Memetics talk at PhreakNIC I used a joke as an example of a meme. It remains the best example I've been able to come up with. There are many similarities between what I said and what he said here. I will have to remember his take on it, and incorporate it into my own. Key thing about memes is that they are mutually supportive.

Douglas Rushkoff on Memes