Yes, this is true. For example:

I got the word "meme" and the concept of a cultural "virus" from the book "The Selfish Gene", by Richard Dawkins. (Yes, I own a copy of it and have read the whole thing.) I'd read that before memes had come into popularity online, so I still think in his broader definition.

The general idea is the groups rise and fall with the combined strength of their genes and memes; a combination of sexual selection and tradition, basically.