Memes were around long before your bullshit "ironic" yank online cartoons and slogans.
As our old friend Richard Dawkins described it back in the 70's, it can be anything that gets passed from brain to brain, like an accent, or a basic word, or a tune.
Neither do most people have much difficulty understanding that in the internet age, this tendency for morons to automatically believe something on face value because it is made catchy or "clever", is planting the seeds of destructive thought and behaviours in the psyches of said morons, and that is something that should be paid attention to more closely.
Then these morons re-post and re-post that something that made them feel clever, or edgy for "getting" it, like you were saying, and the stupidity spreads, and conditions more and more people in ways that are destructive as it travels through the internet.
Yes, memes. Basically imitation and replication, Jamboi. Most intelligent people have no problem "getting" the concept, Jamboi, they undertand what it is, and actually keep in mind that is exactly what you are doing on this forum, metaphorically swimming around in an online petri dish, or a fish bowl if you like, in the name of observational science.
Now go wash your butt as Mowl told you to.