I was on one of the sites where this first took off. It was called lolbot.net and it was basically like funnyjunk. There were tons of sites like that dedicated to funny images. Images weren’t called memes back then. Images contain memes. So the concept of “stealing memes” meant something different. If someone’s home site came up with a meme, they didn’t want people on other websites making their own original images using that meme. They were supposed to get their own memes instead. And they didn’t want other sites memes stinking up the place either. Staredad was a pretty sore subject for a while because multiple sites and forums were being attributed as the creators. People were really territorial over web sites and their cultures back then. They still are but now that there’s like three websites it’s a lot different.