Around 2007, when the initial viral memes appeared online, every single one was unique and brought a smile to your face. Do you recall advice animals? That template with the rainbow spiral background? That material was nourishing.
Then arrived around 2012, the time of Grumpy Cat, Doge, and similar phenomena. They were amusing as well. The top text bottom text era is truly one to cherish, and I sincerely long for it.
Recently, memes have turned into an uninspired jumble. As the “caption above image” style becomes more popular, every joke is essentially identical. Certainly, it's not that they aren't amusing; it's just "I've come across this one previously."
What bothers me is the way memes have turned into disposable content. In the past, every meme was iconic and memorable, but nowadays, it's merely random individuals playing around with new, unamusing content and quickly disregarding it.
The Bill Clinton Swag serves as a perfect illustration of this. It was around for just one week in May 2020, then it was totally forgotten and vanished. Here is the graph of its popularity from Google Trends. Damn that spike.
Numerous other memes experienced this type of fleeting popularity during quarantine, after which they faded away. Honestly, I can't even remember.
Memes such as Coffin Dance aren't inherently bad, yet they feel repetitive, uninspired, and evoke the thought, “I've encountered this already.”
In short, memes have declined from being memorable to simply disposable.
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