got a reply on one of my posts that said "why do genuinely liking something and making it into a meme have to be mutually exclusive? at what point did memes start to exist solely to disparage something?" and i'm thinking about that. because there is like, a genuine point there,

in that at some point "memes" really did go from like, harmless inside jokes to something meant purely for irony and to make it look like you're cooler and better and funnier and more disaffected than others. probably coincides with around the time image macros went out of style

actually that's kind of making me realize the root of why i dislike "wholesome memes" because there's an implication in the current state that all other memes have to be ironic and "unwholesome" and that kinda seeps into the behavior that causes Wholesomeness to exist as a niche

memes in the current state of things, regardless of intention, just don't feel genuine at all due to the cultural context surrounding them. and that's probably the deeper subconscious reason i used "not in a meme way" to indicate i liked something genuinely and unironically