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The term "meme" was originally coined by Richard Hawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. It was meant to be the cultural equivalent of genes. Basically, any idea that's passed on and becomes recognized in a society is a meme. But it's not something known only in academic circles… In fact, the word became widely used on the Internet in the mid 2000s. What's more, memes were the topic of the video game Metal Gear Solid 2. However, around 2011, some people began misusing the word… Correct me if I'm wrong, but they seem to think a meme is any funny internet picture/animated .gif thingy… So I was wondering, where did this misconception come from?

This is something that came from mainstream media not understanding memes. Corporations, in an attempt to be "hip" with the audience, started posting image macros and putting them on tv calling them "memes", and 'normies'(by the modern sense of the word aka people who aren't up to date with memes) and as such people at large began calling images in particular 'memes'. Corporations still do it these days, hell MTV U(the MTV channel that plays on TV's at my university) has these promos called 'COLLEGE MEME OF THE DAY' in which they show 2010-type image macros about college life and call them 'memes', so the idea is still being perpetuated by corporations.

tl;dr: corporations did it, we just have to live with the consequences

The heavy use of "nice meme" was probably influential in the generalization of what "meme" means as well.