No meme is entirely one’s own. When you create a meme and put it out into the universe, it’s fair game to screenshot, post, and send to your friends. The only reason that memes can thrive as a piece of internet culture is that nobody has full ownership of them. They are folkloric, they are by the people and for the people. Imagine if every time you sent a meme to your buddy, you had to say, «Just so you know, I didn’t create this meme. This meme is the intellectual property of a woman named Patricia Smith, who posted it on November 2nd, 2022.» What an exhausting way to live! Memes work best when everybody gets the joke, and the way to ensure that as many people get the joke as possible is to spread them far and wide. These memes can and will be posted again and again, and that’s how they’ll live on forever.