Good point, yes - if I'm surprised to see this turn of phrase in the NYT, and yet I implicitly assume everybody knows what it means, then maybe I shouldn't have been surprised in the first place.
I see what you mean, but in a lot of ways many mainstream memes have had their origin on 4chan (not only pol/b btw) and memes influence speech and everything else.
Would be interesting to see a detailed analysis of this IMO