I was going down memory lane, I graduated in 96. But Internet culture of the mid 2000s to mid 2015. Seemed like there was always some stand out video or event ranging from chocolate rain video, nyan cat, amazing horse, I like turtles, why does the Internet seem so stale lately? I just realized a lot of this fun stuff stopped around 2014 or became less prevalent the closer we get to events that started dividing us, like gamergate, Trump canidancy in 2015. God this last decade has just sucked and it just keeps getting worse. How did we go to so much hope and promise to where we are now? Even reddit sucks now
There are probably many reasons, but I think there are two ones worth mentioning (aside from money, which everyone else has mentioned so I won’t bother).
First, pretty much everyone is online now. The real greybeards of the internet talk about Eternal September which is when the internet first began to reach a larger audience in the early 90s. IMO the same thing happened (on a much bigger scale) with the advent of smartphones. The difference in scale between mid 2000s and now is difficult to imagine. And I just don’t think you can have a cohesive culture across such a vast set of people.
The second (related) reason is that you are a lot older now than you were back then. Most of us who grew up in that period just don’t have the same interest in memes as we used to. I presume younger people do have their own memes but (i) they are less likely to pop up on the websites I browse, (ii) when they do, they don’t interest me, and (iii) because there is so much more content out there now, each individual meme is probably shorter lived.