Internet culture in 2015-17 was edgy and tryhard.

Anyone notice how late 10s memes are starting to seem kinda innocent now?

They were absurd in an amateur kinda way, memes since 2020 have become absurd in a very "aggressive" kinda way

We didn't have the revival of rage comics in the late 10s, we didn't have all the schizophrenia memes or the creep trolge memes.

It was absurd in a random kinda way, just think of "E" or Ungandan knuckles or the deep fried memes, or all the T-pose stuff



the picture in the start of this video explains it well

This new wave of rage-comics only became a thing in late 2019 too

2017- late 2019 was the absurd/ironic era

Late 2019 - now (2022) is the post-ironic/ creepy era of memes

I enjoyed a lot of their videos honestly, though a lot of it stems from the fact their videos were more than just "lol let's say the N word and other offensive things", and more a mixture of edginess mixed in with absurdist humor and general over-the-top antics.
What I hated from this era, were all the fucking "kys" and "drink bleach" memes that came out of this era. That shit wasn't clever in the slightest, and it's not even like I found it particularly offensive (though TBH I don't get offended that easily), because you see this shit all the time, it just got stale and boring.
I do agree with mc98, that most people who participated in this culture grew out of it.

I would love to document all the phases of internet and meme culture in a detailed thread at one point, but for now, this is my brief analysis
2003-2006: this era of internet humor is very much primordial, and is defined by early viral videos posted on platforms like Newgrounds, eBaumsWorld, YTMND, and YouTube. Some of the most famous examples include Star Wars Kid, Numa Numa, GI Joe PSAs, All Your Base Are Belong to Us, Peanut Butter Jelly Time, etc. There aren’t really any meme templates though. Every meme is largely self-contained. And with few exceptions like the Peanut Butter Jelly Time banana, there aren’t any meme characters that exist yet.
2007-2009: Viral video culture, which was emerging in the previous era, truly explodes here, giving rise to classics like Leave Britney Alone, Charlie Bit My Finger, Dramatic Chipmunk, and of course, the rickroll. However, these memes differ from before in that we see the emergence of legitimate meme formats and structure. YouTube Poops became popular during this time, and are essentially absurdist edits of cartoons and video game clips. Some of these, like the Mario cartoons and Zelda CD-I cutscenes, became sources for many memes which were then remixed and played around with in various ways, thus establishing what we know today as meme culture - the remixing of previous internet content and making new versions of it. Even rickrolling was more than just a self-contained video, based instead off essentially a lighthearted form of trolling. Instead of shock content, it’s just a dumb goofy song from the 80s.
2010-2012: This is the era of the rage comic, and the bottom text/top text meme. You have memes based off real life scenarios and incidents. There’s a very lighthearted sense to this era. Politically incorrect edgy jokes aren’t a thing. Both this era as well as the previous had cat memes being very popular, such as Nyan Cat and Grumpy Cat. After 2010, viral video culture largely died off YouTube. The fact many memes were based off easily defined templates allowed for them to made easily, resulting in memes as a whole becoming more popular due to it essentially being possible for anyone to make a meme.
2013-2016: This era is defined by…a lot of things. This era sees the rise of Vine, a platform dedicated to posting short videos. Vine’s absurdist and short-form structure led to the revival of viral video culture. This era is also defined heavily by montage parodies/MLG memes, and, more interestingly, the rise of edgy politically incorrect memes. This particular sort of “cringe” meme culture arose thanks to the likes of Filthy Frank and LeafyIsHere. “Kys” and autism jokes, 9/11 memes were all popular during this time. The increased political polarization that goes on in overall internet culture following Gamergate also results in the creation of political memes, particularly during the 2016 election cycle, as well as the radicalization of the Pepe the Frog meme, who became seen as a symbol of the alt-right.
2017-2018: A short-lived but nevertheless interesting time defined heavily by deepfried ironic absurdist memes. These memes often involve applying a whole bunch of effects over a picture, making it as difficult to look as possible. There is a joke, but it makes completely no sense whatsoever. Add emojis (namely 🅱️, 😂, and 👌), and T-posing and you’re all set. The memes are often ironic revivals of top text/bottom text memes from the early 10s. But edits are also popular, and are basically to the late 10s what montage parodies were to the mid 10s, or YouTube Poops were to the late 00s. These videos involve taking a song or TV show clip, and making edits whenever a certain point comes.
2019-present: Our current meme era. This era has been marked by a return to sincerity and of once again pointing out the inconveniences of our lives, but this time, there is a much darker and more introspective tone to memes. 2020 saw a return of political memes akin to 2015-2016, with many focused on the 2020 election cycle, as well as political compass memes. Wojaks have been considered modern rage comics in how they describe our lives and how we handle situations. I had a phase in 2020 where I was obsessed with MBTI, and I noticed these memes applied extremely well to MBTI. You have virgin vs Chad memes, doomer memes, and other such memes. You also saw the rise of TikTok, which basically served the function of Vine, as a platform for creating short-form video content, except here the videos are longer. We’ve seen TikTok’s influence spread to other platforms such as YouTube, with their new “YouTube Shorts” platform. This could very well lead us into a revival of viral videos on YouTube, like we saw in the late 00s, but only time will tell.

It was more early to mid '10s when YouTube was edgy. The ranting community really popped off around that time. The ranting community on YouTube really died out after 2015.

Out of curiosity but, I still wonder why the meme era between the mid 2010s and 2019 + covid20s was shotlived, i swear the internet flipped their tastes and all the deep fried shit gradually disappeared throughout the second half of 2019, i mean that years march and december felt like differ time periods just from the internet perspective, let alone 2018, what do you think flipped the switch so abruptly?