They are everywhere. You literally cannot go online or watch the news without seeing them.
I'm not talking about advertisment or subliminal messaging here, something far worse.

We live in a world where the average person's attention span is that of a potato...

What is the culprit behind this? What is lowering the intelligence of modernized man?.

meme

mēm
noun
an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.
-a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc. that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.

Dumbing down the herd

Original ideas and content?! Preposterous! The meme only serves to invoke the same meaning and message over and over again, sometimes with a minor variation. But what effect does this have on people?

First off, every meme is generally recycled and overused to the point that the original point of the meme is lost in translation, often leading to misrepresentation of what the idea behind it initially meant.

Secondly, the meme serves to shorten the acceptable amount of time a person will use to determine if they wish to partake in a particular action. Meme's are basically the crack cocaine of entertainment, once a user falls into their trap slowly they will be less inclined to seek out informative or wholesome entertainment and will fill their eyes full of recycled meme garbage.

What does this all mean at the end of the day? Well, It's hard to say for sure. A large portion of why meme culture has become so popular is that technology has made people lazy in my opinion. The meme serves as a sort of self circle jerk half as attempt at continued humour.. But sadly falls short and leaves the user with dwindled capacity to accept good entertainment.

TL;DR - Meme's are shortening humans attention spans and making us collectively more stupid.