But I think there's another term for these bubbles, "echo chamber". They exist in every shared activity if no new input is brought in to keep the family from getting incestuous. The more I think about the concept of the "meme" as an analogue to genes, the more I see parallels.
Here's an example: http://forum.deviantart.com/devart/suggestions/1745568/
I'm sure 99% of HN knows about J/K navigation and appreciates when websites implement it. But it's unknown outside the world of software development.
There's a bubble at ConceptArt.org, CGSociety, and every other place where people gather to talk about something. Art bubbles and tech bubbles have a similar problem: convincing people in other bubbles that what you value has value. The art in the article makes more sense when you see it as the product of a bubble. You would need to peer inside the bubble with a guidebook to know what you're looking at.