<nettime> why isn't memetics a thing?

first time poster, long time lurker, and I can't sleep.

suddenly found it very necessary to post this and ask the question of you brainy guys.

I read Richard Brodie's Virus of the mind a while back, and it boils down to a simple question really,

given that what I see out of the window is now a global, pervasive battlefield/sphere of operations that is generally about control/information warfare/propaganda, why isn't memetics the bleeding edge science being taught/debated in academia?

am I being too reductionist/purist here, or not enough?

I'm a terrible lefty, and I generally feel like the press is the enemy in general, but that's just opinion I guess, the idea that Facebook is evil seems to be a thang, even though I can't put down my iPhone for more than half an hour.

I see the sphere of operations as pretty much everything we see and here, and that boils down to ideas, the spread of them, the generation and control of them, and the combat between them.

philosophically then, why isn't memetics *the* science?

or is this just a stupid question, and I should shut up and go to sleep?

I read too much sci-fi, including Max Barry's lexicon and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, but why do I not see courses in memetics, how to engineer memes, and more importantly how to engineer anti-memes and vaccinate against existing memes?

I could blather on in some kind of passive-aggressive tone for a while, but hopefully I can go back to sleep.

If this is massively off-topic, and should be ignored, just let me know.

"I'm weird, ask me why" - Izzard.