Obviously, memes are not my taste, so I can't claim I'm not biased. I understand that their wide appeal is what makes them so popular, but it is that wide appeal that has been detrimental to the quality of Reddit. The memes don't vary and typically fall into three categories 1 Popular social tropes Advice Mallard says, don't dwell on your cell phone during a date, don't drive slow in the fast lane . Walter asks, am I the only one around here who says Thank You? 2 Emotional Porn Scumbag Steve and Stacy. Confession Bear. Food for outrage. 3 Far too general of an appeal to not be universally upvoted Success Kid says, Baby slept in today, so I got to sleep in today. Bad Luck Brian Thought something good was going to happen, something bad happened. The problem with this is that they advance nothing. They buffer over critical thinking skills, they overgeneralize, are often misleading or flatout wrong. So what's wrong with a little mindless entertainment? Nothing. There's always a place for it. But the kinds of people who find these memes so appealing are the same kinds of people who have hijacked the voting system so that 90 of every post on every subreddit you can guess what the top 5 comments are going to be with decent accuracy. Memes have contributed to the undermining of Reddit users' ability to think for themselves, the hijacking of the voting system so that only certain types of material opinions are visible to any but the most dedicated Reddit spelunkers, and driven the general quality of the site down. r adviceanimals needs to go the way of r atheism and, well, go away.
Memes and /r/adviceanimals are bad for reddit in that they have lowered the quality of posts, comments, and visitors.