The source the article links to [0] seems to be scraping stuff from popular "meme" generating website like imgur, 9gag etc. "We analyzed data from Priceonomics

The source the article links to [0] seems to be scraping stuff from popular "meme" generating website like imgur, 9gag etc. "We analyzed data from Priceonomics customer Me.me, a search engine that's indexed practically every meme ever produced and made the text on the images searchable." This is a strong claim. But even if I give them the benefit of doubt, their analysis shows that memes have strong correlation with real world event and trends die out. Eg: thanks giving meme became popular right before thanks giving and faded after thanks giving. I don't find this too surprising. I am sure memes can tech us stuff. But I would find stuff like meme trends Vs comments to do sentimental analysis or something along that lines. --------------- [0] https://me.me/post/the-meme-zeitgeist https://me.me/post/the-meme-zeitgeist