I think quickmeme's (and its ilk) success (well, besides the part based on vote-manipulation) is a great example of how smoothing a couple of steps in an otherwise mundane and everyone-knows-how-to-do-it process can be a real product. Having to make an image via quickmeme, then copy-paste and click over to imgur, and then upload it to Reddit is a trivial set of steps...yet, those steps add up...and for many users, it's just a matter of time before the labor of the steps outweighs the impulse to post a meme...and then, the volume of memes will be dampened

(OTOH, if it takes more work to post a meme, then maybe only the good ones that people make the effort to post will be seen)

No, quickmeme doesn't actually generate the final images. Instead it layers a transparent PNG on top of the image.

That's not true. They DO layer a transparent PNG on the image, but that transparent PNG has no content whatsoever. It's there just to prevent people from hitting right click and "Save Target As."

w... WOW. REALLY?

I refuse to believe quickmeme became popular because reddit liked it. That is very very anti-user.

Edit: theeeey sure do!

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3uwwk8/#by=ad

right click, view image, go here: http://static.quickmeme.com/media/social/qm.gif

delete that element and do it again, go here: http://i.qkme.me/3uwwk8.jpg

Never heard of spaceball.gif?

Yeah, I just Inspect Element and look for the real <img> tag.