Another reason IMHO that this site has maintained its relative quality is the policy of effectively banning memes (whether textual or visual) and not embedding images from links or allowing them to be attached.

Someone needs to do a deep cognitive study of how memes, especially in image form, affect cognition during discourse. Whatever is going on it seems obvious that their presence immediately reverts people to a juvenile junior high level of discussion at best.

They also seem to lead to the development of this kind of obscure signaling culture hive mind. I don't even know how to describe it. In Star Trek TNG they called it the "borg songs," the sort of emotional-cultural carrier wave that pervaded the Borg collective.

Meme-dominated sites like 4chan immediately turn me off. I find that whole style creepy and culty and gross and it feels like some kind of soft mind control technique. I felt this way long before 4chan became "Stormfront for nerds," but the fact that this style if discourse would create an environment compatible with that way of thinking doesn't shock me at all.