I'd say a repo needs more than 150k views to get ~5k stars. I can confidently say the number of users who derive actual value from it is measured in the hundreds at least (compared to none on a viral meme site). If those views aren't generating 0.01% * $1, I can bet the house on viral meme site not generating that much, unless they happen to land very generous donors.

Edit: Just checked Homebrew analytics. >10k recorded installs in the past year (low single digit number of releases during that period, no major publicity event). I don't have readily available analytics for other installation channels on macOS, or analytics for Linux and Windows which are pretty fractured. Point is the user base is sizable.