linuxmemes

He represents the meme well in the sense that these memes are all made by people who tried to climb up the bell curve but fell back down to the start, and think that’s the same as reaching the end.

That's true, that could be a trap! I mean I'm currently toying around in Arch and so far there's been no problems at all, but I'm just a casual user and I'd say that I fall left-side to the curve. I'm one of those in the "OS is a bootloader to the browser and maybe other applications" camp. I do feel though that it's possible that some people may not want to think about maintaining Arch (Arch is just an example obviously), and would rather turn off their brain when it comes to system maintenance and use something like Ubuntu or Fedora or Mint, which is the point of the meme. He said that it's not worth his time figuring it out, not that he couldn't figure it out, if that's worth any distinction.

Another example I can think of is using Vim when you could just use Nano or any generic text editor. I mean I use Vim as well (for pretty much everything), but in the end some people may not want to spend time getting decent at Vim because they don't feel it's worth their time, not because they inherently can't. If he spent some time, he may be able to do it. I'm sure most Linux users can. But it's just the time and energy that you must expend to get there, and not everybody feels it's worth it, even technically proficient Linux users.

A more general abstraction of this bell curve principle is sorta like managing depression; the left-side of the curve will say something like exercise, socialising, eating healthy foods, and having life purpose. The middle might say that we need SSRIs, multiple therapy sessions, mindfulness exercises, daily journaling, compassion training etc. But, the right-side of the curve might again say exercise, socialising, eating healthy foods, and having life purpose. A realisation that something is not worth your time is not inherently indicative of the inability to do said something, though I get your point. It's all good though!