Sometimes we curate which image is the "top example" because the most upvoted images do not use the original format. The top example is primarily to show people who haven't seen the meme before how it was originally/primarily used and what the general format is. For X All The Y in particular, there are a bunch of more highly upvoted memes than the example we chose, but they all just use the image as a background for making an enthusiastic comment.
We could certainly add more sort options to the meme page like "top 30 day", "top all time" etc.