A good meme does not need to be clever. It just needs enough people to commit to the bit at the same time. That is how something goes from stupid to weirdly communal, which is basically what happened with 67 at ConFuzzled.
The internet loves pretending memes have rules and lore, but most of the good ones are much simpler than that. Someone says the thing. Someone else says the thing back. A third person says it in the wrong place at the right time, and suddenly the room has decided this is culture now. The 67 meme is a good example because explaining it makes it worse, which is usually a sign that it is doing its job.
This is one of the reasons furry spaces make memes hit differently for me. Not because the jokes are always better, but because people are already comfortable being sincere and silly in public. A room full of people who can commit to a character, a costume, a dance, or a terrible joke is exactly the sort of room where nonsense can become shared language very quickly.
That is the positive bit. Memes can be lazy, mean, or exhausted, obviously. But the harmless ones are just social glue with worse spelling. A tiny signal that says yes, we are all here, we all saw the same stupid thing, and for the next thirty seconds we are going to make it everybody else’s problem.
