The world’s richest man regularly interrupts his day to post memes on Twitter. He also spends time and money supporting the meme-inspired cryptocurrency Dogecoin.

To understand why Elon is an active memer, we should first establish what a meme is. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, the man who coined the term meme, conceptualized memes to be the cultural parallel to genes.

According to Dawkins, memes are ideas that spread through a process similar to natural selection. Memes are constantly altered and only the most successful versions are widely posted. The successful meme resonates with and is shared by a large number of people. It strikes a collective nerve.

An effective meme triggers something within people and urges them to distribute the idea further. As such, Dawkins likened memes to viruses. This is why we say something goes viral if it is widely shared on the internet. People become “infected” when they see and internalize a meme’s message. They then proceed to distribute the meme to others.

It used to take ideas many years to spread. Now, the internet allows for the instant distribution and consuming of ideas.

Elon Musk recognizes that one can gain tremendous power by packaging ideas in ways that resonate with people and distributing them through the internet. Meme manipulation is frictionless idea distribution.

If we understand a successful meme to be an idea that advances a belief among large groups of people, we see why someone who controls memes, controls the universe.