This kind of emergent behavior reminds me of my time in high school. My friends and I eventually developed a small patois through tons of inside jokes that fed on themselves and morphed into inside jokes of their own. None of this was intentional—it was just copying things that were funny and changing them slightly in more hilarious ways. We could basically freely utter nonsense that would otherwise get us detention.

I feel like this is similar, where one behavior is seen, then altered by someone else, etc. It’s like an in-group signifier that you understand it, and that you can modify it in a meaningful way.