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摘要：考研英语作为一门考研公共课，虽然大家都学了英语十几年，却仍经常有总分过线挂在英语上的情况，因此英语复习不单单是单词、做题。阅读作为考研英语的大头，仅仅做考研真题或许没法满足你的阅读量，因此帮帮之后会不定时推出一篇英文美文，这些文章都与考研英语阅读同源，多读必有好处。
TikTok Is the Latest Reason Teens Are Addicted to Their Phones
抖音成为青少年沉溺手机的最新原因
When Holly Grace, a 23-year-old part-time singer and full-time nurse in Nashville, Tenn., first started making videos for the app TikTok, she had no idea she was any good at creating memes—those viral bits of content that have been the internet’s raison detre since millions discovered a moronic website called “Hampster Dance” 20 years ago.
23岁的霍莉·格蕾丝是田纳西州纳什维尔一名全职护士和业余歌手，当她第一次开始在短视频应用 TikTok 上录制视频时，她完全没意识到自己有创作“模因”的天赋，自20年前数百万人发现了搞笑网站 “仓鼠群舞”以来，此类像病毒一样迅速传播的模因内容简直成了互联网存在的理由。
The word “meme” was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins well before the internet was being used by anyone other than a few far-flung computer nerds. He defined it as “a unit of cultural transmission,” and intended that the word sound like “gene.”
“模因”这个词最早是由进化生物学家理查德·道金斯创造，比互联网还只是少数几个电脑迷在使用的时代还要早。他将其定义为“一个文化传播单位”，并且还希望这个词听上去像“基因”。
Modern-day memes have become the lingua franca of our digital world, allowing people to communicate in an often humorous kind of shorthand. Even if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ve perhaps heard of Grumpy Cat, or that dress that was either blue or white, or the “Gangnam Style” video that forced YouTube to add more digits to its view counter.
如今，模因已经成为我们数字世界的通用语言，让人们以通常很幽默的短内容进行交流。即使你不知道我在说什么，你可能已经听说过暴躁猫，或者那件连衣裙到底是蓝色的还是白色的，亦或江南 Style 之类的东西。江南 Style 的视频火到让 YouTube 不得不将观看次数的计数器增加到更多的位数。
All of them went viral, and then became memes as people appropriated them for their own uses, taking the picture of Grumpy Cat, for example, and adding a couple lines of text about one way or another that people are annoying.
所有这些都产生了病毒式的传播效果，并在之后成为了模因，人们纷纷拿它们来为己所用。比如拿一张暴躁猫的图片，再加上几行形容人以这样或那样的方式烦人的文字。
Brad Kim, editor in chief at Know Your Meme, a website devoted to the obsessive, even academic, study of memes, says they are best understood as a cluster of ideas that people reproduce and iterate on, altering their meaning as they go.
“了解你的模因”网站主编布拉德·金表示，模因其实就是一系列相似的想法，人们对其进行复制再生，在这个过程中其意思也在发生变化。该网站致力于对模因进行沉迷式的，甚至是学术性的研究。
Originally just widely shared pictures or videos, memes have become something anyone can easily create and exchange. For Generation Z and younger Millennials, they’re a way to get beyond the limits of plain text.
模因最初只是被大量分享的图片或视频，现在已经成为任何人都能轻松创造并交流的东西。对于Z世代和更年轻的千禧一代来说，模因是一种超越了普通文本限制的存在。
“One of the problems of text is you lose the tone,” says Chris Slowe, chief technology officer of Reddit. “But if the meme is well known, you get a certain kind of tone and way of reading it that either helps the joke or helps get across what you’re trying to say.”
Reddit 首席技术官克里斯·斯洛说，“文字的问题之一是体现不出语调，但如果某个模因是为人熟知的，你就会感受到某种特定语调以及解读它的方式，这或许有助于笑果，或者能够帮助人们理解你想要去表达的东西。”
In other words, they’re a language of sorts, often laden with coded references or sentiments that are inscrutable to anyone born before the first Bush presidency. And certainly, being in on a joke that’s lost on older generations can be part of the allure.
换句话说，模因是一种语言，这种语言充满了各种隐晦说法，或是在第一任布什政府之前出生的人无法理解的某些情绪。当然，能够参与这种上几代人无法理解的笑话也挺吸引人的。
(全文共374个词，华尔街日报)
►重难点词汇：
meme 模因；大脑模仿病毒；文化基因；弥母；表情包
moronic adj. 低能的；迟钝的
transmission n. 传动装置，[机] 变速器；传递；传送；播送
lingua n. 舌；似舌的器官
shorthand n. 速记；速记法 adj. 速记法的
appropriate adj. 适当的；恰当的；合适的 vt. 占用，拨出
obsessive adj. 强迫性的；着迷的；分神的
iterate vt. 迭代；重复；反复说；重做
inscrutable adj. 神秘的；不可理解的；不能预测的；不可思议的
allure vt. 引诱，诱惑；吸引 n. 诱惑力 vi. 诱人，吸引人
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