No offense, but slapping words onto plain, recyclable templates is a meme practice as ancient as the internet itself, not a recent thing, and it was as abundant then as it is now.

^ KYM's oldest visible image. And not too far from it:

They just changed format from image macros to object labeling, but the idea is essentially the same: write recognizable/relatable thing/event on flavor of the month week meme format and farm karma while it lasts, then rinse and repeat. It kind of makes you realize just how hypocritical people are when criticizing webcomic artists for "pandering" with relatable content, when pretty much all non-ironic memes do the exact same, except webcomic artists actually put time and effort on their stuff, yet they get shit as soon as they become popular. Hm, actually, popular memes get the same, so I guess the lesson here is that popularity is a federal crime.

But yes, high-effort memes have always been the exception to the rule, really. It just seems like they used to be more abundant because memes die faster today, so memes that actually last stay on our memories for longer and are more cherished now. That is why Steamed Hams saw a resurgence and came to stay. Same with Virgin VS Chad.

I'm kinda surprised people aren't making memes out of the little girl from this trailer, given how fuckin hilarious her reaction to the bunny exploding is and how applicable it is as a reaction gif, and that's not even mentioning how it's blatantly a Moana cameo