Meme stocks might coincide with meme coins - but I don't know if it's fair to blame crypto for everything.
I think the reality is that - for whatever reason - people are willing to take on MUCH greater risk today for reward than they were prior to the pandemic.
I don't think we can blame crypto for everything. Sure, maybe you could say crypto has been meme-ing since 2017 - 3 years before the pandemic. But we've seen plenty of speculative bubbles like that - if it even was one.
Crypto didn't really start meme-ing with clearly bullshit NFTs and meme coins until the exact same time - 2021 - when Dogecoin et al have meteoric rises coinciding almost exactly with all the meme stocks.
I think this is actually one the best meme indicators: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dogecoin/doge/btc/
The Japanese Asset bubble was by far the biggest bubble of all time - and it lasted nearly 6 years. The Nifty 50 was a 7 year bubble, nowhere near this big. So, we might be in a bubble - but if we are - it's getting close to being the biggest, longest one ever.