Why are most memes on Lemmy from 5-10 years ago?

I believe it started out as a joke to post ancient memes. And then it just took off and people kept posting them.

That and like most other people said: on average there are older people here, so they relate to the memes of yore.

Yeah, I might be to blame for some of that shit. I started [email protected] a few months ago, then it blew up and started covering c/all, then it spread like herpes to the other meme communities.

Shit has died way down since that one weird week.
- thank you for your service 🫡
on average there are older people here, so they relate to the memes of yore.

Old memes remind me of when I had the normal amount of sad and existential dread.

Because literally everyone on Lemmy is 35

That must be why I like it more here.
I'm a decade older, but I feel like a lot of people who left for Lemmy were active on Reddit 10-12 years ago, and have preference for the flavor of discourse of that time. As it grew, reddit became far too sarcastically meta in a lot of ways. What was once a spicy "in joke" became boilerplate. I'm not surprised at the exhumation of the old memes. It may just be a phase of some sort, a necessary reset, who knows?
Im 12 and what is this?
- 35 is a very young age that people in their 40ies like me envy the youth of.
Nah, you're two years off.

Or, more likely, my parents managed to hide two years of my life from me.

That's awful sneaky of them.
- Yours, too?!
  
  Damn them! Stealing our years with the expectation they'll get to enjoy them. Not in the cheapest retirement home Florida can offer!
Aww shucks, thanks. I'm actually 40 but people say I look younger since I went on a diet.

Reddit used to be good, we just reliving the good old day of Reddit.

Serious answer: why not? There's no expiring date on meme. If it convey the funny then there's nothing wrong with using old meme. Renewing meme for renewing sake is boring.

Yeah bring back overly attached girlfriend and winning baby!
- And Doge before crypto ruined it.
Fair, but trollface and ffffffuuuuu are expired however.
- Trollface is quite a defining meme tbh, it's a symbol for trolling. The rest however....
- I could use some trollface every now and then.
Because comedy changes.

I think lemmy skews a lot older than reddit, we are reliving our internet youth

I'll be 40 in a few months. I think for people who grew up at the beginning of the internet, we know how much things can change and how quickly.

My guess is that we're less willing to put up with bs changes, and more willing to move on because we know something's popularity doesn't neccrsarily make it the best choice.

I think that by adulthood into mid-life and older, adults care less about what their friends are using and more about how well things work for them. That's certainly the case for me

I assumed it's because Lemmy has more users over 30. I think most of the younger people are still hoping in vain that Reddit will stop being horrible. I imagine they'll be here soon enough lol

If they can handle the app, there's no reason to come to lemmy. Reddit is better, only reason I'm (and many others) not there, is their shitty app.
- For me it was Huffman basically saying he planned to ruin the site AND force everyone to use the shitty app so that he could sell off Reddit in the IPO to put more money into his own overstuffed pockets. Then he allowed everyone to graffiti a fake wall about how mad they were for one whole week so those who stayed could pretend like they were "fighting the man" and then completely stop talking about it lol

Classic memes, so old some people still called em image macros.

Memes used to be funny

Because no one had time during the covid lockdown years to make new memes. Everyone was making bread, decluttering and buying new PJ's.
And now the economy is too expensive to pay for new memes.

Old people, like me 😹

Because we are mostly people from the corpse of reddit, and reddit was nothing but reposts of 10 year old memes?

Vintage memes are comfy

Maybe I am mistaken, but aren't "new memes" people reposting their twitter crap and hoping for better luck? The AI memes are getting pretty good, if those are what counts as new memes and what I think new memes are are actually older then idk.

Well, if it's content, I don't really give a fuck, to be honest. Lemmy needs more engagement, and if that means posting 20 years of memes in a 2 year time period, let's see some nyan cat! 🌈

Engagement and interaction >> content.

We have hundreds of bots posting into the void on Lemmy. People want to interact with other people

Because the hot new meme is old memes.

I would love to see old memes, where are you finding them? All I see are the shitty stock photo memes lately, and it sucks.

Uh, Lemmy isn’t really big on memes (except over at c/Risa on startrek.website — their Star Trek meme game is on point!), so the old memes are partly satire for those of us that are older than memes and mostly make fun of them. With old memes. It’s complicated.

I feel like it's kind of the same in other meme communities like 9gag and reddit. Reposts upon reposts upon reposts, with the occasional funny new thing.

Topical meme communities are sometimes a bit better with this.

And sometimes a meme doesn't age. Sometimes, old sayings can still work wonders in new situations. Sometimes even better than what a new one would.

I don't think old needs to be reinnovated just because it's old. I enjoy many old things!

Well, for me, it's because the only meme group I'm even semi active in is explicitly for old memes :)

This isn't really the community for that kind of question. You'd probably get better replies on NoStupidQuestions. That being said, ive definitely noticed the same thing. No real answer here, but it is a weird quirk with the Lemmy community. Stock photo memes? Seriously? Is this circa 2018 r/youdontsurf??

Imagine caring about how old or new memes are.

Why are you from 5-10 years ago?

We are avoiding copyrights

It's probably due to the selecting 'Most Popular' meaning that it only finds the most upvoted thing on the instance. Instances as well as the Fediverse have grown so much adding more and more content over time but that does not always mean that everyone sees that one meme anymore making more modern posts have less traction. (At least from what I can think)

Controversial opinion perhaps, but I think because in general humans aren't funny and they don't really have anything new to add to anything. Babies love to see the same joke a million times, it never stops being funny to them, but it's something that only changes a little as we age and not as much as we would think to think about ourselves.