Their sidebar appears to be intentionally vague. It is overwhelmingly low quality memes.
History wise
195 was a college dorm of a few friends who made a reddit sub to share memes with each other
Over time the sub grew really fast and became a major shitposting sub. I dont remember if it was while 196 was still around or after it shut down, but r/196 was made and became pro lgbt while 195 was kinda a cesspool. The guy running 195 shut it down because they were no longer dorming together or talking, and it was becoming hard to manage a huge sub alone with so many people posting hateful crap
196 became the weird trans femboy lgbt shitpost sub
197 popped up because people didnt like the lgbt stuff and it kinda became more like 195
196 moved here but a lot of people jumping to lemmy havent actually interacted with 196 before do theyre just posting whatever whenever
That’s a great explanation. I love the idea of having an “internet historian” (other than the actual internet historian, who really doesn’t talk the origins of the internet). I guess there’s the meme databases but still, this is a great read.