The term memetic engineering was developed by Leveious Rolando, John Sokol and Gibran Burchett who were researching and observing the behaviour of humans after they were exposed to to certain memes. Memetic engineering is the analysis of an individual or individual’s behavior, the selection of specific memes and the distribution or propagation of those memes with the intent of altering the behavior of others.

Although it’s difficult to predict which memes will take off, it’s certainly possible to follow guidelines and rules to craft your message so that it is as ’sticky’ and ‘contagious’ as it can possibly be.

A good example of memetic engineering is described in this article: Meme, Counter-meme. It describes how Mike Godwin created a maxim in order to counter unproductive discussions on internet forums.