It depends on the community. I've seen many where the reactions are genuine and actually serves a purpose. From what I've seen, its almost always a popular js/node project that attracts this kind if behaviour like seen in this thread (based on my own observations).
Last example is vscode's santa hat[1]. It seems that that thread is mostly empty now but I remember there was huge meme thread going on in that issue or in reddit/hn when that thing was happening.
I wonder if javascript will be in similar place in 10-20 years that PHP is today (e.g. "its not like it used to be and things a actually quite good now")? The language it self (javascript) might be there already, but is the community anywhere close yet? SQL injections used to be the thing PHP was known for in the past but not so much these days (the community is more experienced?). Meanwhile, problems with NPM and the whole packaging situation is what javascript is known for these days, but will the be so on 20 years?
PHP got (or is getting?) type hinting, while javascript doesn't have such thing (typescript or flow doesn't count). Javascript is event loop based, while PHP is (afaik) request->response based. These days, javascript usually is compiled for web, while PHP just sits there on the server and you can swap out the source files when you upgrade. You could go on and on.
> Posting memes/jokes in an issue wastes the time of people who actually need to be able to read through the issue.
> Stop it. Use emoji reacts if you feel the need.
In two minutes I have 24 dislikes and 13 likes. I think the introduction of emoji reactions was a bad idea, it gamifies the issues system.