How or WHY a post earns what it does will probably always be a mystery to me. Some of my posts that I've spent hours or days working on made pennies, and yet some of my silly stories have done well. There is no consistency but I don't expect there to be because it's ever-changing here.
I've been pretty active on Steemit in the 7 months since I've joined. I'm fairly certain I am on someone's curation trail but because of the variance in my earnings, I rather believe (and hope) that the majority of the upvotes I receive are organic. Comments are the life blood of this community in my opinion. Did the meme that was made with a generator have a lot of comments and community interaction? How did it compare to the one that was original? Are you comparing the memes or the creators behind them? Has one been on the platform longer than the other? How many posts do they have in their body of work? These are all things that need to be considered before something is labeled as a "popularity contest". We've got to look beyond what one post made...or didn't make.