Meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in the Selfish Gene (1976), where he meant to make an analogy between how...
....well, genes basically operate as a self replicating instruction set via things like plants and animals... or virii / viruses.
In that sense, we live in a gene-world, where genes perpetuate themselves, spread and grow and are the primary drivers of dramatic change and growth and collapses.
But ideas, notions, attitudes, philosophies... these become powerful enough once they are embodied by biology capable of contemplating them and acting on them, at scale, that they can actually override genes as the fundamental driver of change in the eco/biospehere, and they also propogate and essentially vie for dominance or prevalence amongst each other in similar ways as genes do.
So... 'meme', because it sounds close to 'gene', and also because of similar sounding roots in greek, 'mimesis' essentially meaning 'behavioral imitation'.
'Meme' itself was not widely used outside of basically academia untill it gained a more specific meaning in the roughly the late 90s / early 2000s, as referring to a kind of (usually goofy) image or video that spread virally across the online world.
To my knowledge, you did not broadly have people emailing each other goofy ascii art in the 80s and referring to that as a meme, nor widely or within a niche subculture referring to any kind of idea or cultural craze of the time... certainly at no where near the scale and popularity of the term nowadays.
If you wanted a meme from roughly the time that the term 'meme' was being broadly popularized to mean 'online internet joke image', you'd be looking at basically demotivational posters.
... It was known to who the spies were leaking too.
Who then also largely kept it a secret.
This is a prime example of why I tried to list the sort of two... extreme edges of this 'rule'.
The entire Epstein thing is basically very similar to the Manhattan project inasmuch as... a pretty good deal of people knew something, a good deal of people knew a lot.
But... most of those people were... pretty good at this compartmentalizion thing. Not to mention just actually members or clients of or directly connected to intelligence agencies.
Untill enough of them fucked up, harder and harder, at keeping things a secret.
I don't see this as a kind of cut and dry fullproof rule.
The first rule is basically that the more people required to be involved in a conspiracy, the less likely that someone doesn't eventually leak something.
I will note that this works for a lot of the more dubious ones, we never went to the moon, the earth is flat, etc.
But I will also note that any competent intelligence type agency compartmentalizes as much information as possible, so that very few people actually know enough to put together a 'big' story.
Please under no cicrumstances should you mix up the Left and Right Nabisco Twix Catheter Elements, call your doctor immediately if you believe you may have done this.
Ok, I am now imaginging some kind of Biblically Accurate American chimera/angel/monster.
Like uh, A buffalo that also has two eagle heads, maybe a sort of skirt/rear covering of turkey feathers, the tail is rattlesnake, and its body is not covered in eyeballs, but like, Amazon Alexas.
And uh, lets also make it like the... uh... the vision of the statue from Daniel 2.
It has faces made of bitcoin, a mane or chest of dollar bills, a hindquarters of shimmering black crude oil, a tail and legs and hooves of coyote tan thermoplastic.
... I think I might have just concepted a Kojima-esque monstrosity that would make sense in MGS4.
removes onion from belt
holds it up toward a cloud in the sky
begins to clench onion-
... No. No.
Eh, howdy partner, you remember Digg?
Does anyone remember Digg?
... Remember when triforcing became a thing?
... Remember 4chan before the V for Vendetta mask got associated with it?
gaze drifts back toward onion
... Pepperidge ... farm... remembers...
grins strangely
SUDDENLY FIRES MAH LAZOR AAAUGH WAHRBARGBL!