Either everything can be a meme, or memes don’t exist.

If nothing is a meme until it is, then all original content is, by definition, not a meme. They only become “memes” when spread and repeated.

So, any original picture with text is thus, not a meme, or potentially a meme. If it is not a meme at conception, then it shouldn’t be proliferated in meme communities, because it’s not a meme.

If everything is a meme then there is no novelty or uniqueness to the content, thus making “memes” superfluous and ubiquitous to the point of nonexistence.

So, the qualifications are arbitrary.