When parts of the general public enjoy a character that the author intended to be bad, there's often a lot going on under the surface that outside critics don't realise. This results in articles that are hilariously wrong from the perspective of readers who are more familiar with the movement.

Consider Patrick Bateman. There are at least six things going on with Bateman memes: aesthetic appreciation for the movie and/or character, comedic irony, intentional contrarianism to annoy the sort of people who write articles about how much they hate Patrick Bateman, an obscure in joke, following the format without understanding the underlying work, and genuine unironic belief that he's a good guy.

If you are not familiar with the type of people who make memes about Patrick Bateman or name sandwiches after the Great Gatsby, you might misread them as misreading the work.

Gatsby isn't supposed to be bad. He's supposed to be tragic.

The bad guys in Gatsby are Tom Buchanan and, to a lesser extent, Daisy. One might make a case that Nick is not a good person, but he's telling the story as a salve for his guilt. He's mostly just a hypocrite who doesn't want to admit he's the same kind of wealth that grinds non-wealthy people up for pleasure.

But Gatsby is a man who became obsessed with a woman and did everything he could to win her heart, including fraud. Yes, that's not good behavior, but he's not meant to be taken as a bad guy so much as someone who made some mistakes because of higher emotions.

Tom OTOH is just toxic masculinity. Fucks other women, can't stand any other guy getting attention, doesn't give a crap about people who die, etc.