So, Flickr memes spread differently from blog memes. Blog memes tend to work by a form of “shaming”. You nominate 1 or more people as the meme carrier (in a sense you infect them with the meme).
It would be interesting to know how the success of a meme spread in this way (all else being equal) is a function of that number. Too low and a small number of folks opting out kills the meme, too high, and you aren’t “special” enough when nominated, so likelihood of the meme being spread is also low.

Now, as I speculated, I think things like Flickr memes spread differently. The carrier isn’t people, it’s the idea itself. So, factors which affect the spread of these kinds of memes would be things like

1. how easy or difficult it is to do (frigelets require you to setup a video camera, even just your phone one)
2. how cool the resulting work is. A really cool result merits a lot of work. A really lame result merits little if any work
3. How much effort the viewer has to go to.

Yes, sleeveface requires a fair bit of work. But, the result, no matter how often you see it, is arresting (when done well).

With frigelets, the viewer has to go to some effort. By watching a video (I think there’s a lot of psychological resistance to video especially by long time web users, because even if your download speeds are now great, they didn’t use to be, so we learned to avoid them), and also by spending the 90 seconds or so for the pay off — whereas with sleeveface, the payoff is instant.

Just some random thoughts