Internet memes are now part of mainstream media culture. On social
media, each day memes are created, consumed, and shared by millions of people. Advertising
agencies create their own memes to promote brands and products. However, memes are also
integral to subcultures on 4chan, Reddit, and Tumblr, where most memes originate from. These
subcultures battle the mainstreamization of memes to protect the independent media making
practice of memeing from outsiders, who they call ‘normies.’ Their weapon of choice are
so-called ‘dank memes,’ which are self-reflexive internet memes that criticize mainstream
memes and memeing. This critique is a form of visual vernacular criticism, which is highly
understudied, especially in regard to digital metapictures such as dank memes. The question
this paper wants to answer is: how are dank memes made and employed to reclaim the
independent media making practice of memeing from mainstream and marketing culture? The
focus lies on specific pictorial practices that counteract the popularization and
commercialization of internet memes. To explore these counter-practices, the paper proposes
a methodology that combines media philosophy with practice theory to stress that digital
metapictures themselves such as dank memes hold knowledge about the media practices that
mainstream memes are made of, and about how to counteract them. To explore this media
knowledge, examples of the meta-meme $2 are closely examined in the context of the subreddit
r/dankmemes. The conducted picture practice analysis suggests that dank memes oppose image
macros, while being criticized themselves as mere shibboleths to meme culture.