From my perspective, memes got pretty self-deprecating and ironic from around 2017. As the author states, this means that such memes are only funny when one get

From my perspective, memes got pretty self-deprecating and ironic from around 2017. As the author states, this means that such memes are only funny when one gets the context, but this is almost okay when one creates memes for an in-group. Thus the context dependence of memeing is not unlike other forms of in-jokes; but I don't know if other sorts of in-jokes become as ironic on a similar timescale.