This really isn’t a downside. What’s wrong with a games community making memes about it and only caring about the gameplay? I mean we literally play games for the gameplay. Like by playing a game you don’t need to care about the development, Personally I do but it isn’t an issue if someone really doesn’t care. By calling people who shitpost and play the game less mature you are literally talking about every single person who plays the game including yourself, You have posted memes here yourself if I remember correctly. By playing and enjoying a game you aren’t obligated to make suggestions for the game.
Personally I feel the community has a lack of purpose right now, Its memes and suggestions - people blaming everyone and everything for the inactivity but really its cause an entire forum cant exist on suggestions and shitposts alone. There needs to be more community content - more incentive to create something and share it. Who cares if there is a bunch of memes if there is an almost equal amount of creative creations? Bottom line is - making shitposts and caring about the gameplay doesn’t make you less mature it makes you a part of the community, Not everyone needs to make suggestions or contribute to development.
In my opinion, a potential solution is an incentive to get featured in @MoltonMontro s community blog. Maybe something like what destiny does where getting featured on the blog gives you exclusive cosmetics in-game. Different cosmetics for different types of feature (ex - tshirt for videos, hat for art, different gunskins for different types of mods etc) Like honestly anything to incentivize creating something other than curated maps, Curation has lots of creative limitations and have to be spaced out - with a game as goofy as unturned we should be encouraging the community to just go bonkers and make crazy shit for the community. Stuff like Candyland and Tales of Terror are good examples of what we need more of, just really out-there stuff that still loosely fits unturned. I know fun workshop content is possible, just look at the mapjam stuff. Unturned videos should be as bonkers as the game, We need more unturned art that captures that crazy feeling of playing the game. The solution to the meme suggestion loop we see every day - is a reason to do literally anything else, and I feel like the community blog is where we could do that.
TL;DR: Instead of hating people for making shitposts or suggesting nonsense we should encourage them to create something more “worthwhile” via the SDG blog.