I understand that they function as a kind of secret handshake so you can know if someone "has stairs in their house" or whatever, but it always seems self-important when people refer to spouting some 4chan joke as a "meme" like they have some huge amount of cultural cachet, and you're such a pedestrian if you don't understand it.

When really there's no value to it other than the lizard-brain dopamine reaction you get from knowing what longcat is when a lot of people don't recognize it.

On the other hand, I think there's still room in conversation for running gags, short jokes that are particular to the subject being discussed, rather than a wide-spectrum 'joke' like those exampled above.

Just link to the clip on YouTube if you want to share it. Those gifs lack all the charm of the original and spoil all the jokes.

On another note, can we all agree to stop using the word "meme" to refer to every stupid internet joke? Saying "lazy cat is lazy" is not "a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena," it's just an inside joke with no punchline. It doesn't convey anything other than "I read this phrase once and now I substituted the thing you were talking about into it."

Actually it is a really good idea. I'm going to try at night, but maybe doing it at like 3 PM would be useful on two fronts.