(work in progress)

About

Meme Stealing is the act of someone copying and/or downloading a meme that a different user posted, in order for the alleged "stealer" to post this meme elsewhere.
although over the years the term become more ironic, and is usually used in a tongue-in-cheek way to praise said meme and state that it's so good its worth "stealing" so that it can posted in other places on the internet and gain more fame. to the point that the term has become its own catchphrase and people started openly expressing on how they love to steal memes.

origin

earliest iteration of the meme so far, was traced to Pewdipie's subReddit when the image of a masked thief "stealing the meme above" was posted as reaction to a different comment, soon after, this very image was "stolen" by other users, which eventually spiraled into many different variations and and image explolits

spread

soon after, the meme, upon its many iterations were spread across all of reddit, and then other sites with reaction images like Twitter, facebook, 9gag, funnyjunk and more. with many new versions and edits added consistently.

with many different formats

and catchphrases

and mashups

notable examples