Sometimes the goofy joking is legitimately helpful to lighten the mood once things get that bitter, and the interaction you were involved in was a good example.
It doesn't.
The correct solution is to instantly nip it in the bud and tell the two people to go hash it out in PMs and keep threads on topic and to stop derailing it with ***throwing.
The memes and jokes are pretty childish and serve to subvert discussion unnecessarily, and just further derail things even harder.
We need neither ***fests, or meme replies.
Let's instead be adults, civil, and maybe get back on topic?
If that seems fruitless, lets just let the damn thread die because its April and you people are arguing about ***on the March thread.
Let it die.