When I first read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, the idea of the meme immediately grabbed my attention. I was still in high school, and the word had not yet been picked up by the general populace. Richard Dawkins was only known as a famous evolutionary biologist, and the biggest internet meme was hampster dance.

I am disappointed that memetics is still struggling as a science, but I think it is only a matter of time until it is accepted in the scientific community. Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science is an interesting read, and covers many of the heated debates about memetics.

This TED talk by Susan Blackmore is a nice quick introduction to memes.  The Meme Machine was one of the first books to defend memetics as a science.

Daniel C. Dennett approached religion from a memetic standpoint in Breaking the Spell.

Keep in mind when Darwin came up with natural selection, no one had any idea what the mechanism behind it was. Mendel's work was not recognized until the early 20th century.

I can't wait till we are able to decode the mechanics of meme replication. Memetic engineering may sound a bit unsettling, but it has been going on since before we even knew what a meme was.