…read this idea to other people. The canonical example of a contagious idea would be some kind of evangelical religion, where they would say: “Hey, this is the way the universe is structured. This is how the cosmos exists, but also convert other people to this way of thinking, go out and find people and tell them this as well.”But there’s a way simpler idea of memes: a contagious song, a catch phrase, a political slogan, or even a symbol that’s easy to draw. Wouldn’t that be a meme as well? So looking at this I thought that some ideas are more contagious than others and some ideas aren’t contagious at all—they just kind of sit there. So what’s at the other end of the scale: what kind of ideas resist being spread? What information would you intrinsically not want anyone else to find out about? Or maybe you do want to spread it, but you can’t for whatever reason?

I have QNTM on my blogroll because I think this kind of thinking is really interesting – not just with the spec fic energy they take to it, but also in looking at social history. I’d recommend their SCP stuff to anyone who doesn’t absolutely hate speculative fiction.