It's definitely a risk. That said, I'd argue that a post announcing "Steve Jobs has died" genuinely should rise to the top - it's a huge piece of news after all

It's definitely a risk. That said, I'd argue that a post announcing "Steve Jobs has died" genuinely should rise to the top - it's a huge piece of news after all. This model isn't so much about suppressing existing highly upvoted content, but rather finding content that should have been upvoted but was missed. There's still a threat from meme-worthy content though. Honestly, I think this comes down to the initial community setting expectations that meme-worthy content will be shorted into oblivion, and reinforcing that culture.