Those meme email chains were annoying at the time, but kinda endearing to look back on in retrospect.
I kept getting added onto ones my mum and dad were getting from a bunch of their friends that had people’s random corporate/work email addresses included and stuff…
It was a simpler time, when boomers hadn’t discovered social media yet, and were making their own fun without Facebook and without the algorithm.
If someone offered me a chance to magic social media away like it never happened, and the price I had to pay was unfunny memes spamming my inbox, it’s a price I’d pay gladly.
The exact same trends go round and round in web design too (and now apps).
At first things were square (because that was all the technology could do) then in the 2000s CSS exploded and everything went colour gradients and rounded corners, just because people could, then that became old-hat and everything went flat and square again, and then rounded came back (but without so many gradients)
Everything is cyclical.