Absurd and surreal humor has always been funny, it's not something GenZ invented. It's even possible that GenZ saw all the baggage and rules that late GenX and

Absurd and surreal humor has always been funny, it's not something GenZ invented. It's even possible that GenZ saw all the baggage and rules that late GenX and millennials established for using memes "correctly" and not wanting to be seen as clueless as the boomers, said "fuck it, let's do nonsense, if they criticize that we'll tell them they're the clueless ones". I also suspect memes like the ones you find in r/BoneHurtingJuice and r/AntiMemes are an interesting mix of that. They're creating their own baggage and rules for deconstruction memes. IMO the trend the article is hating is memes focused on ego and opinions. You can still see the deconstruction of a minion meme to make it funny again, but a significant part of memes today are personal opinions in trending templates. The template is not important, the opinion is, and its purpose is getting reactions, but not only laughs.