this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2025
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memes

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Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/Ads/AI SlopNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.

A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment

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[UPDATED] [META] Do we need a rule regarding pictures of text, screenshots of other platforms, etc.? Input needed. (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world to c/memes@lemmy.world
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Update (1/7/26)

Thanks for all the feedback. It seems like the majority opinion is that sometimes microblog-meme type posts and pictures of text are annoying, but being too restrictive would be worse, so we won't create a new rule right now.

That being said, if it ever feels like these types of posts are overwhelming the community and drowning out other content, we won't rule out creating a rule down the road (similar to the rationale for the politics ban). In the meantime, if something feels spammy, we will still address those case by case, so please let us know.

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.

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[–] Ofiuco@piefed.ca 2 points 1 week ago

This is a pointless discussion.
Most people don't care, they want their doomscroll and will upvote anything. They don't care about categories or definitions, we could have a single community with everything posted there and wouldn't care, they'll just consume.

Those who care will always be a minority so the things will never change when asked to the majority.

This is basically what happened multiple times in reddit, the mods didn't think something was that important, the majority didn't care, so someone took it in their hands to create an alternative sub that would actually fill that void.
That's basically the only answer here, someone creating a meme comm that's actually for memes and not a combination of !microblogmemes@lemmy.world !whitepeopletwitter@lemmy.world !greentext@sh.itjust.works but as we know it requires dedication and time so... not that easy.