There has been discussion about whether we need a new rule to more narrowly define what a “meme” is, in response to screenshots of other platforms, pictures of text, etc. being posted. Some good arguments for yes and no were being made in this thread over the weekend, and this isn’t the first time people have brought it up, so I want to open the question up to the community.

My personal approach to moderating content is pretty “light touch”, because I don’t want to stifle people having fun (this is a meme page after all), and heavy-handed moderation reminds me of the worst parts of reddit. I think the role of a moderator is to clean up spam, keep the community on the intended topic, and intervene if people are being harassed, but for mostly everything else, that’s what the up/downvote system is here for. So, the question becomes “Are screenshots of other platforms like Reddit, X, Bluesky ‘off topic’? Or, do they count as memes?”

Here are some things to consider:

  1. Is a meme anything that gets repeated or shared? (this is the broad definition, but not necessarily the norm in how it’s used)

  2. Does a meme require an attempt at humor?

  3. What about news? (What if a headline is funny?)

  4. Is an image required? Should a picture of text (not from another platform) be removed?

  5. Are we overthinking all of this?

Please let us know what you think. I’ll keep this post pinned for the week, and if there’s a general consensus, we can add a rule. Otherwise, we’ll just rely on the community upvoting or downvoting what it wants to see and making case-by-case judgment calls as we get reports.

  • Comrade_Spood@quokk.auEnglish
    27·
    16 hours ago

    My take is a meme is a humorous repeated and shared idea/joke/schema/etc. Screenshots fall under this for me, espcially if the text is in reference to more conventional memes. This is because I count copypastas as memes, which makes it hard to differentiate a copypasta from social media screenshots and such. I would consider screenshots from social medias to be a low effort meme, but a meme nontheless.

    My take is we should allow it, but soft moderate it by constructively and politely suggesting other communities that might fit the content better. This would ideally spread more awareness and engagement in other more niche communities, allow people to still post memes in good faith here, and provide a way for people to help softly moderate without ruining other people’s fun.

    If this was practiced though, I feel there should be a rule that community suggestions should not be spammed in a post. This is to prevent the comments from devolving into brigading and spam.