People don't realise that others are forming real life opinions on these memes.
Maybe, but if any non-developer internalizes a worldview from those memes...that really just means they're blind to the usually worse offenses in other careers. While not perfect, measuring programmer productivity is infinitely easier than a long list of other job roles. At the top of that list is "middle manager".
We take hits on the chin about elitism, sexism, whatever other low-point of human nature. Meanwhile, whoever is spewing the critique fails to notice that in practically any other role, the *-isms are worse and harder to prove.
To some degree I believe management do this on purpose.
Maybe it's this environment has made me a more serious person than some of the other developers I know. Don't use memes in conversations with collegues and certainly have no interest in toys and games in the office.
Would love to not be responsible and not treat work as a fun place but don't see how that's possible if you care about your job and the work that you produce.
Other skilled professions do not either communicate with memes, have slides and swings in the office (as seen in some Google offices), etc. If part of the geek culture is being infantile, that's no wonder that devs got told what to do.
I don't know if the gamification of dev work went so far because of this, or if the causality goes the other way around.