Following a few years in the spotlight as the hot new trend, most memes were starting to grow stale. While some people simply gave up on memes, others decided to spawn a new generation of meme culture, reminiscent of the early days of the Internet, back when memes seemed completely absurd to most people. Thus, the mostly absurd dank memes were born as a counterculture to the now mainstream meme culture.

In the meantime, said mainstream meme culture was being co-opted by political movements, used as propaganda tool to fuel the flames of a manufactured culture war, culminating in the 2016 USA elections in which an alt-right candidate won by spreading large amounts of fake news and politically loaded memes.

The fallout of Gamergate, a gigantic wave of drama which led to the harassment of some minorities, gave visibility and a large audience to a lot of new content creators who dedicated themselves to discussing sociocultural topics full time. Some were reactionaries who refused to get over the drama, but others were more progressive people trying to educate the masses on previously unknown topics.