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Over the last few years(starting in 2016), I've made a few passing observations on the state of memes, along with their history and past. Years of too much time on my hands and there being nobody to stop me have acted as a breeding ground for a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, related to the future of memes and the seeming ages they can be divided into. Hopefully you can at least enjoy my insane ramblings, and on the 1/100000 chance that this actually is real, I can say "You heard it here first folks!!"

Let us begin
To start, I would like to divide the past of the internet into several ages, based around key points

Prehistory(<2003): The internet before the existence of 4chan. Memes as we know them didn't exist, at most being chain emails and forwarded stuff, like the Dancing Baby and Hamster Dance.
4chan Age(2003-2007): 4chan was created in 2003, and with it, a new age of the internet was born. It was only used by the most fringe communities irl, being limited to a few people, and from it were born memes. There is a sort of culture shock looking back at screencaps from this era, it almost seems unbelievable how genuine and lighthearted people seem, especially contrasted to the bitter, edgy 4chan most of us know in the modern era. Exemplary memes from this time include the Awesome Face, Leeroy Jenkins, Divide By Zero, I Herd U Liek Mudkipz, and Lolcats, memes generally seemed to be based on references or the chan culture, viral videos, or genuine original content like Newgrounds Animations(continuing into the next age). Memes lasted for years, and were produced slowly.
Middle Ages(2008-2012): Around this time, the internet started to grow in popularity, with now huge sites like Reddit and Tumblr in their infancy. Throughout this time, the internet still maintained a type of innocence, and 4chan was considered to be the "final boss" of the internet, and it still held a revered spot in the internet, producing widely loved classics such as Katawa Shoujo. The internet wasn't as wide eyed as it was during the early age, but still maintained a level of earnestness and detachment from politics and the real world. Interestingly, there was a pretty close connected between anime and gaming fanbases(NicoNicoDougas were popular, Gijinkas and Anime styled things ran rampant(can't wait for a certain someone's response to this)) and the internet as a whole at this time, with popular animations like Caramelldansen and Leekspin being popular here. Exemplary memes from this time are Caramelldansen, Rage Comics, Advice Animals, the Navy Seals Copypasta.
(here I have two different ideas on the rest of the timeline, I'll include my alternate theory below)
Premonition Age(2013-2014): Around 2013, the internet reached critical mass, becoming ingrained into the media and public as a whole. There was a slight shift away from the 4chan culture of the past, including Japanese and 4chan influences, with most new memes coming in the form of greater spread things of note, like Doge, Twitch Plays Pokemon, Dashcon and Florida Man. Through the last few years there had been an increasing politicization of the internet, and now it's time for the moment you've all been waiting for: Gamergate.
Dark Age(2015+): I'm not gonna sugar coat this, I honestly believe the modern age of the internet is the worst its been, having been on a downwards spiral since Gamergate. With Gamergate caused an influx of users into the political scene of the internet, and no matter whose side you were on, you can agree the massive crusade segwayed into an era where politics were ingrained into the internet. This image is often circulated on today's 4chan, citing Gamergate and the Fappening as the catalysts to the 2016 election's massive influx of 4chan users. Almost everyone agrees in the modern era that 4chan is a shell of it's former self, a self hating pile of vitriol, shitposting, and the death of it's old tight knit, tradition bound culture. Memes were being created and forgotten at a breakneck pace from 2015 onwards, with there being a huge number of forgettable controversies and political drama. I can't even remember any memes from the last few years, aside from ones I've hated like Dat Boi, Mocking Spongebob, Gamer Joker, and the huge number of Wojaks being spawned by 4chan.

After that depressing ending, time for me to get to the good stuff: the theory.
GIMAT proposes that the internet is divided into several different eras, with discernible start/ending points and causes. 4chan, the popularization of the internet, the mainstreamification of the internet, gamergate and the modern day politics, etc.. The internet naturally changes over time, and it seems inevitable that eventually there will be a dawn of a new day.

I believe that internet culture will eventually loop back around, and after a breaking point in the next few years, the internet will move on to a new age, one of sincerity: no more postmodern irony, no more political warfare in every part of the internet, no more mass produced and forgotten memes. The internet will proceed to a state resembling it's old self, with memes rising in low, well paced amounts, no real world politics being forced into the internet, a genuine and happy internet culture. The reason I have begun to think this, is that over the last few months I've noticed an increasing amount of people on Know Your Meme and 4chan getting increasingly fed up with the internet, calling out the object labeling, thing I don't like, and mass produced wojak memes of 2018, looking back fondly on the old internet and lamenting how things have gotten this way.

They may be in small numbers, but it says something when Trollface, Taking the Hobbits to Isengard, and other ancient memes keep trending and getting commented on with reverence, compared to the dozen other trending articles that pass just as abruptly as they came. In my time on 4chan, I've found dozens of threads dedicated to posting old internet culture, from rage comics, to old videos like All Your Base Are Belong To Us, and discussing how we've gotten this way. I believe that by 2020, there will be a new era, and the current age will end, and whether it be through a new site, fringe communities spread throughout the internet, reformations of 4chan and the ancient titans of the old internet, or some other way, there is going to be a renaissance, rebuilding from the old base we once had.

Well, that got oddly inspirational for a lunatic conspiracy theory.
So yeah, that's what's been buzzing around my mind the last few years, feel free to shitpost about it in the comments below

Yeah. I definitely do not regret asking you to make this post.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. The age of memes is fucked right now. I wonder what sort of memes will lead the new age? Because when the Lobster Uprising happens, only Lobster memes will be approved. And wojak edits/controversies are not lobster approved.

Punished Link: An hero denied his memes

Modern Internet: Where memers become demons

Legitimately good Hegelian dialectic there. I think it's a fairly universal cycle between overly optimistic to overly pessimistic to deeply nihilist to hard-earned hope and then back to overly optimistic. You can see it a lot throughout generations, too. The only problem is that the very notions of critical self-reflection and dark irony are relatively more new and I think it's harder to cycle back into more earnestness once people start becoming more meta in their views of the world. Which suggests to me that the next stage of a more light-hearted Internet won't come from older (which in Internet terms means like 20-29, lol) people giving up cynicism and returning to more innocent times but instead will simply be a new generation of younger kids who grew up with those semi-ironic "wholesome memes" with overly-sappy messages of giving all your friends your love and putting in effort to succeed in your chosen field memes you often see with all the heart emojis or crossing out part of negative memes and rewriting them to be positive like this.
But in general, I agree. People are actively trying to turn back the tide of despair so common to edgy memes these days. The only other problem I see is that it's possible that a lot of the people creating wholesome memes are on opposite sides of one of the many divisions of the Internet (alt-left vs alt-right, 4chan vs reddit vs tumblr vs twitter, critical vs fanboy, elitist vs casual, etc.) so it'll still be cast in a political light.