My own anecdotal evidence agrees with this. LOL cats, FAIL, Rick Roll, Xzibit's catch phrase; this list goes on. It seems most of these memes originate or are

My own anecdotal evidence agrees with this. LOL cats, FAIL, Rick Roll, Xzibit's catch phrase; this list goes on. It seems most of these memes originate or are popularized on relatively geeky web forums (4Chan, Reddit, eBaum's, SA, etc), where they propagate among those forums' readers -- the sort of geeky people that spend their time on web forums. After a while a meme reaches critical mass and spills over into popular culture, and the geeky early-adopters have to listen to the meme they helped spread all over again.