How does a cultural unit move?
- Repetition, reconstruction, and diffusion
- Competition for attention and persistence
- Transformation during transmission
WEME Theory
When does a narrative acquire a ‘we’?
Some ideas merely spread. Others become connected to identity, roles, and action so strongly that people attribute intention, outcomes, and responsibility to a ‘we.’ WEME is a theory of that transition.
01
A Simple Definition
A WEME is neither the story itself nor the group itself.
WEME is a communicative process. A family of related narratives changes over time while preserving a recognizable relationship among ‘who we are,’ ‘what matters to us,’ and ‘what people like us do.’ These roles connect to visible actions; outcomes are attributed to the collective; and those outcomes select or transform the next narrative variants.
Unit of WEME analysis:A bounded episode of narrative → action → outcome → subsequent narrative
Meme and WEME
Transmission is only half the story.
WEME is not intended to replace meme theory. It asks a different question and follows a different unit.
How does a narrative lineage connect to a ‘we’ and to action?
- Shared identity and role
- Recognizable action and attribution of outcomes
- The return of outcomes to later narrative variants
A WEME is not a ‘larger meme,’ a cultural genome, a virus, or a living organism. The analogy with cultural evolution is useful only when translated into observable relationships such as repetition, transformation, recombination, and branching.
The Identity–Action Schema
The core that survives across different variants.
Sentences, images, and examples can change. What keeps a lineage recognizable is a relationship, not a fixed phrase.
Who are we?
The boundaries of identity and membership, the right to speak, and what lies outside this ‘we.’
What matters to us?
A shared experience, injustice, possibility, threat, inheritance, or future that gives the narrative weight.
What do people like us do?
The role through which a member builds, refuses, repeats, protects, or brings something into being.
A Recursive Process
The narrative moves forward; the outcome travels back.
The stages are not always separate or slow. In a digital wave, enactment, interpretation, and the retelling of an outcome may occur within minutes.
Narrative Field
Multiple variants, symbols, and stories circulate.
Recognizable Lineage
An identity–meaning–role relationship persists across some variants.
Legible Action
An audience recognizes the act as an enactment of the narrative role.
Attribution to a ‘We’
Intention, action, outcome, or responsibility is connected to a collective address.
Outcome Feedback
Success or failure preserves, changes, or divides the narrative variants that follow.
The diagnostic signature of a WEME
Outcome × Collective Attribution × Variant–Role Linkage
An outcome changes a narrative more selectively when it is attributed both to a ‘we’ and to a particular role within the narrative.Six Possible Trajectories
What can happen to a WEME after an outcome?
Persistence
A successful role stabilizes as contradictory repetition declines.
Transformation
The form or method changes while the identity and main direction remain recognizable.
Recombination
Two narrative branches borrow some roles or meanings from one another.
Branching
Related branches produce incompatible roles and competing versions of ‘we.’
Institutionalization
The narrative becomes embedded in rituals, tools, habits, and durable rules.
Decline
Repetition, recognition, enactment, or the attribution of outcomes gradually disappears.
The Academic Formulation
When Narratives Become a ‘We’
The academic formulation defines WEME as a meso-level, temporal, and testable process and proposes seven falsifiable propositions for future research.