These weren’t even what we called “memes” back then (closer to twenty years ago).
These were image macros or caption images. A meme back then was usually a phrase or saying like Over 9000 and other crap like that.
But whether we called them memes or not, by definition they were. The Selfish Gene came out in 1976, where Dawkins coined it as “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation”.
One trick was to post memes that don’t have jokes, like the one about when I caught the ferry over to Caturday. I needed a new lol for my cat, so, I decided to go to digg, which is what they called fark in those days. So I tied a cheezburger to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a bitcoin, and in those days, bitcoins had pictures of doges on 'em. “Give me five doges for a bitcoin,” you’d say. Now, where were we? Oh yeah, the important thing was I had a cheezburger on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white castle because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big macs.
