Bro I once had a meme with 50,000 views but I don't think it ever made it to the front page while memes by big users only have 50 views and make it onto the front page.
I think a good idea would be to make 2 fun streams, one for users on the top 250 leaderboard, and one for the smaller users, so they can get noticed and rise up into the leaderboard where they will then be able to post in the big stream.
Ik it's an age-old problem, but can we take a moment to notice how popular Fun Page memes; Are the unfunniest, laziest memes on ImgFlip? People slap a repost in and put a meme below it and it gets popular.