meme death is a categorical misunderstanding of the meme lifecycle, albeit an understandable one.
the flawed model is that after the hyper-prevalence of a meme, it becomes overrepresented to the point of no longer having value (“relevance”) and then “dies.” however this model is based in the flawed assumption that something which retreats to a fraction of its former state is “dead.”
this is, of course, absurd. memes are simply ideas; rarely, if ever, do ideas truly die. rather, a meme which has “died” has simply undergone a transition, a movement to a memetic position that is more stable; equilibrium.
in this way, memes are more similar to radioactive elements, or perhaps novel species introduced to an ecosystem. they may boom to an extreme degree at first, but of course, like everything, it must retreat to balance.