Why Meme Text Has a Distinctive Look
The classic meme text style — bold white letters with a thick black outline, usually in a specific font like Impact — isn't an arbitrary aesthetic choice; the heavy outline exists specifically to keep text legible regardless of what's behind it in the image. A plain white (or plain black) text overlay can disappear into a light or dark region of the underlying photo, but a thick contrasting outline guarantees readability against virtually any background color or brightness, which is exactly the practical problem this styling convention solves.
Top/bottom text placement, rather than text positioned arbitrarily around the image, follows the same historical meme format convention that made the style instantly recognizable — a setup/punchline structure mirroring how early image macros were captioned, which stuck around as the default even as meme formats diversified well beyond that original two-line structure.
Font, outline width, and color remain adjustable specifically because not every image or joke fits the default convention equally well — a busier background image might need a thicker outline than a simple one to stay legible, which is why these aren't fixed, one-size-fits-all settings.