As the /r/showerthoughts researchers look towards their experiment, they watch with gruesome fascination as their creation does its work. Marching into the froglike body of the /r/me_irl user, it leeches off their memetic energies, using them to divide at an incredible speed. Then, it strikes. The virus invades their meme generation organ, slowly, yet systematically bamboozling the memetic nodes there, bundling their fresh ideas into a useless tangle. Without any way to produce new memes, the user collapses, one of many sacrificed for the good of its kind.

“So, it’s true.”, one of them says, following a long pause. “You can take the power of shitposting away from them.” The silence begins anew, the same researcher shedding a single tear.

“We must not let this fall into the wrong hands.”, says another. His cohorts nod silently.