I'm pretty sure the meme WAS the message. What other messages are being distributed through random meme sharing, where the recipient has to know it contains some secondary hidden message and requires the means to decode it?!

It didn't matter; once I found out even the possibilities for steganography across a large catalog of JPEG images, it was game over for me. It doesn't matter if there were zero or five dozen secret messages in the files I forwarded. I didn't want to be a conduit for that possibility.

The risk, of becoming a mule, an unwitting accessory to some evil cause, was just far outweighing the rewards of sharing dumb crap with my mother, you know?