Collecting and the age of memeing

An example of old-looking memes. People use methods including screenshots and image compression to make memes appear old. （Photo provided to China Daily）

Excerpt from this article:

Well, with the growth of internet and social media culture, the younger generation has cast their eyes on collecting digital memorabilia.

The collecting of emojis, GIFs and memes has become more and more popular among many youngsters－the older, the better.

Bright, colorful high-definition ones are not popular among the major collectors. No, they want digital “antiques”, older images from the early days of meme culture. The more rudimentary and blurry the memes, the better.

One user on Stage1st, a posting bar for Animation, Comic, Game and Novel themes－or ACGN－defines the pixelation and the faded color of these memes as a “digital patina”. It is now a widely accepted term among like-minded collectors, including one who posted that the definition sounds very “cyberpunk”.