You seem to think that those options are exclusive when in fact gif memes are a blatant example of how they aren't.

The original creator of (say) a video expresses something, a remixer expresses something when they cut it into a gif, and you're expressing something when you send someone the gif in a conversation. The thing that's expressed is almost necessarily different, and each step involves creative choices.

When Ben Franklin said "those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety", he was making the point that, in his eyes, it would be foolish for the government of Pennsylvania, seeking help from the Penn family, to give up their freedom to levy taxes on the Penn family. When someone uses the same quote today, are they making the same point?

Martin Luther King was a full-throated advocate of affirmative action, which is to say applying penalties to white people for being white. When someone today talks about "a nation where [people] will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character", are they supporting the same idea?