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So, I'm not trying to be snarky at all, just genuinely curious, as I've seen several people on Lemmy brag about how much they hate memes... Like, why? Do you not enjoy humor, or just not find them funny or something? It's a bit like someone saying they hate dogs to me. I honestly don't get it.
I didn't say that I hate them. I said that I don't like them. Let's avoid using these words interchangeably.
The issue with these communities is that they recycle the same old material. You mostly see reposts and blatantly bad jokes. Sometimes I feel as though people feel the need to create a meme, but they don't have any idea what it should be about. It's like trying to write a book or song for the sake of writing one. Nothing good comes out of it without a creative idea.
When a new template becomes popular, people recreate old jokes with it, because even templates are not original anymore. There's even a meme about this from Scooby-Doo, where the guy reveals that the monster (new template) is actually some guy they already knew (old template).
Mostly, such communities pollute the feed with unoriginal and unfunny content that doesn't bring any value to me.
Okay, I appreciate such a considered response. I do agree it gets old seeing the same exact post over and over. Reddit was getting really bad with that. Of course there's always the question of why some people find something funny and others don't too.
For me though, setting that aside, I just find the variations on a meme can be really fascinating. Then you have memes referring to other memes or imitating them, sort of like you described. Memes that descend into abstraction so as to become practically incomprehensible... I've had to research a few just to understand whay they were even talking about. I think at its best memeing is like some kind of collective conceptual art collaboration. Or like graffiti or music sampling. So interesting.
I felt that way as a teenager but now as an adult it's like a switch flipped and I find them insufferable. Memes within niche communities are still good though.
Yeah, it seems like all the answers I get boil down to: people don't like them because they just don't like them. Which is perfectly fair, I'm not sure why I was expecting a more nuanced response from anyone. It's sort of like how some people like chocolate and others don't. Who can say why really? It is interesting though that Lemmy seems to have a disproportionate share of vocal meme detractors.