When watching season two of The White Lotus, you could predict the memes before each episode even finished. Take your pick: Aubrey Plaza drily declaring “I don’t watch Ted Lasso”; Italian characters saying “Let’s fun!” and “I’ll slay!”; the increasingly ludicrous outfits of spiritually and sartorially lost assistant Portia; and, above all, practically anything said by her boss, the incredibly insecure multimillionaire Tanya, played by gay icon (code for underappreciated character actor) Jennifer Coolidge.

Tanya’s silly-sinister plot was particularly ripe for memes – she was swept away by a sinister gay cabal who shower her with attention. “Gay guys really are the best,” she tells Portia mid-season, a meta-wink to the bulk of Coolidge’s real-life fans. By the finale she had announced: “These gays, they’re trying to murder me!” The meme potential of either is strong, but together? At least on my very gay social media feeds, it was unstoppable. But as with many moments in this year’s biggest television shows, this reaction felt like it had been deliberately driven by calculating minds.

There was also the Stranger Things kids fighting off evil with the power of Kate Bush; the hundreds of thousands of Wednesday fans recreating Jenna Ortega’s dance moves on TikTok; Cassie’s meltdown over her accidental Oklahoma! cosplay in Euphoria. On the one hand, we’ve seen these scenes ad nauseam for a simple reason: they’re among their show’s funniest or most affecting moments.

But once not that long ago the randomness of a meme was part of its magic; after all, were Emilia Clarke or Matthew McConaughey thinking of the legacy of the moment when they respectively squinted like that or took an eye-bulging drag on a cigarette? Now, it’s hard to shake the feeling that memeable moments are being reverse-engineered to generate not just buzz, but content. As a terminally online person, I both resent and love it.

These moments remind me that, despite my best attempts, I am not a purveyor of fine arts. I am but a little pig snarfing my face at the content trough, then excreting out yet more content for others to snarf. Of course I shared every variation of a “Bitch, you better be joking!” meme, and ate up theories about Euphoria’s contextless montage, and enjoyed every clip replacing Running Up That Hill with an Aphex Twin deep-cut. That’s so me, bestie!

Besides, do memes really cheapen television, the most shameless attention-grabbing art form? The subscription model has made attention – not ad breaks – the top priority; right now, virality arguably matters more than viewership. It’s not a surprise that shows are tailoring themselves to the latest form of currency: everyone sharing the same screenshot or the same line of dialogue. When that serendipitous moment happens, it can resemble a psyop – and to a certain extent, it might be. I’ve freelanced on social media campaigns for streaming services, which meant part of my job was cataloguing scenes, reactions or one-liners that could go viral.

Thankfully, there’s still inherent randomness to why and how the internet latches on to things. While Running Up That Hill became one of 2022’s biggest hits, the soundtrack to Wednesday’s dance, The Cramps’ Goo Goo Muck, is absent from social media because TikTokers decided en mass that the moves worked better with a sped-up version of Lady Gaga’s 2011 song Bloody Mary. This arbitrary choice has seen the track become Born This Way’s sixth single (albeit just in France, for now) 11 years after its release. Simply scrolling through any brand’s social media shows that no one can force a meme – but television writers who think can put all the ingredients in place.

It doesn’t always work. HBO Max’s Gossip Girl reboot is practically begging to be memed, with its characters speaking almost exclusively in nonsensical references. Within the IP behemoth of Disney+, the once sure-hits Ms Marvel, Moon Knight and She-Hulk haven’t yet been renewed, despite their Easter eggs, cameos and twerking scenes. And Andor, a Star Wars spin-off that was possibly the least memeable show of the year, was a hit with critics and audiences alike. Perhaps quality is still what matters most.

That’s why I particularly resent these moments sprinkled throughout The White Lotus: a wacky dance makes sense in Wednesday, but Mike White’s HBO anthology series traded in the first season’s subtlety in favour of virality. It became content first, television second. A storyline about how gay men can wrap misogyny up in compliments and idolisation of a woman’s suffering? Interesting! Having said gay men call Tanya “Madame Butterfly”, or having her coo “Gay guys really are the best”? It’s not exactly subtle, but it is very shareable.

Who can blame writers for aiming for virality? But with streaming services across the board regularly cancelling shows with dedicated but stagnant audiences, scripted television needs to prove its staying power. And White, who has been a contestant on both The Amazing Race and Survivor, knows the rules better than anyone else: outwit, outplay and outlast.