Lighter Asians did it a lot in similar ways, with some similar reasoning. Pale “jade skin” and such has definitely been praised in China and Japan, and whitening of the skin with makeup goes back centuries. Negative treatment or “exotic” treatment of dark skinned Asians (especially Pacific Islanders) is kinda common too, and darker skinned westerners find it harder to live there and work there than white westerners.
Not that I’m in disagreement (honestly, for memes using old meme templates and not actual art, I just don’t care), but aren’t there a number of people who work hard to touch up memes? There was a whole subreddit for High Quality Memes and lots of people touching up templates, before AI was big in doing this.