Again, as with the notifications I have to wonder what the hell they are thinking in imgflip headquarters! This is some odd ball stuff. I can't think of a single instance where I would use any of this stuff. But then again, I'm also not 12 years old.
It's based purely on usage data, we don't curate them. The meme generator is used by tens of millions of people, so the Imgflip community is currently the minority use case, albeit one we give a lot of attention to ;)
I had never seen any of those used in memes so it was odd that they would be an option. The scumbag hat and the sunglasses were crazy popular. So those made sense. But the Barney, or that old mans head. Those has me stumped.
"VagabondSouffle" always uses the one I circled above in the "politics" stream, or images with the same stupid character, and as far as I I know he's the only one that uses it so I don't know why it would be a "popular uploaded image" when only one user is using it!
Makes you wonder for sure. I don't scroll the politics stream enough to know what's what over there, but I will post occasionally in that stream. I have seen a person or two use it out in the fun stream. But like you say not very many.