The memetic speedrun that's so common now on social media has some roots there, to be sure, but I think a lot of it was parallel evolution combined with cribbing things that were already polished from years of metaphorical rock tumbling on 4chan, in the best ifunny.com style.

The ubiquitous expectations for modern humor among younger and even middle-aged people rely a lot more on knowing not just the joke but the culture and context it evolved in, and that sort of thing very much dominated bubbles of terminally online people before many people became terminally online and there was an expectation that everyone would know what you meant if you sent an image macro as the entire reply to an email.

You can find example after example from not that long ago of people who are not so terminally online being completely perplexed, on TV and otherwise, and memes like "what the fuck is he saying" "let's get you to bed grandpa" about the cultural disconnect.

Unfortunately, this sort of attention minmaxing without enough deliberation and learning around it produces people who are uncritical of what they consume and just want the next hit.