beyond this in Phaedrus and in Republic). Basically, froom what I understood, memesis was a devaluation of a philosophical concept by describing it in words (I'm very probably wrong. Most of my knowledge of this comes from the notes in other books) - Plato felt that mimesis was wholly without merit. As opposed to the ideal form of human interaction - dialectical discourse (dialektike techne [0]).
which is essentially describing a virus (in the biological sense). Which is a remarkably good description ... the meme exists only to replicate. To do so it must not destroy its host (by making it so dull at parties that no-one will speak to it, I suppose) and must be passed via a vector (email, word of mouth) to another host. And the cycle begins again.