Thank you for your interest. You have brought up several legitimate and fair points. If it's fine with you I'd like to make a post on @memehive responding to your points and link to this post with proper attribution.

For the main point: "What is a meme?"

There are two main reasons why so far no canonical definition has been established yet.

1 When a definition is established there will actually be two different types: "meme" and "NFT meme".

@memehive will be getting outpost soon for its front end. One of the features of outpost is allowing users to be whitelisted to sell NFTs. Due to copyright concerns (thank you for including that issue in your essay) when @memehive gets outpost there will be a post listing some "dos and don'ts" for NFT memes that won't be applied as standards to "memes" in a blog post. Using a meme to accentuate a blog post is one thing. Selling a meme primarily for profit is another thing.

Meme source: https://vlaa.org/memes-are-everywhere

2 Right now for upvoting memes @memehive is currently using the informal standard of how a reasonable person who types "What is a meme?" and spent a few minutes researching the question would evaluate what is being presented as a meme.

Let's use your post as an example. I would also subjectively agree that it's a meme. It doesn't have text embellished on it but it is a clever wordplay that quickly summarizes and captures your point (a.k.a. "unit for carrying culture").

Even better your post wasn't just a meme with no text. It makes understanding the context easier for more people.

Contrast your post to @judicious/understanding-psychological-benefits-of-music

The comment by @memehive to that post asked the user why the #meme tag was used. No reasonable person would assume the photo included is a meme and the blog post's text gives no direct context to its "memeiness". No upvote by @memehive was given to that post and until that user can provide a satisfactory explanation a "reasonable person" would accept no upvote from @memehive will be given to that post .

After that post the user made another post without using the #meme tag.

Basically this whole second part of "what is a meme?" from the current view of @memehive is that so far there has been little abuse of the tags so far and it's assumed the users who stake MEME and curate are reasonable people when they upvote.

If it ain't broke don't try to fix it.😃

Memes existed before the internet. An example Dawkins might use is "Kilroy was here". Back in the early 1990s an occasional caller to a radio talk show would get past the call screener and talk to the host on the air. Suddenly in the middle of the back-and-forth the caller would scream, "Baba Booey!" Not that I would know anything about that. I've just heard about that happening.😁 In more modern times that has turned into Rickrolling. Maybe there will be some Rickrolling on @threespeak but the #meme tag will be a hint so a unique form of Rickrolling might develop and evolve on @threespeak. If that happens I couldn't tell you what that would be because memes evolve. Evolution doesn't have a direction to an end.

That's my version of an "I don't know either" reply.🤣