Comment by HPSimulator

That might actually happen indirectly.

Memes are basically compressed cultural references. If a model sees the same meme structure repeated across a lot of contexts, it could learn that a short phrase carries a lot of shared meaning for humans.

The interesting question is whether models will start inventing new shorthand metaphors the way engineering culture does ("yak shaving", "bikeshedding", etc.), or whether they'll mostly reuse ones already embedded in the training data.