It is a wrestling meme and is used to get people distracted from the topic at hand and hopefully laughing at the meme's bizarre/out of context subject matter or even talking about the referenced wrestling match or other nonsense. It usually starts with "don't let this [topic you want people to be distracted from] distract you from the fact that in 1998...rest of meme." By starting with that opener, it gets people thinking about the match if they know about it or to look up the match to figure out what the meme is about. This usually leads to people going off topic and being distracted. I believe this is the match that is referenced in the meme. https://youtu.be/9hMp65SzyTU “don’t let this man distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer’s table.”

If you followed wrestling in the 90s, you'll know that Undertaker and Mankind were 2 of the big stars. In 1998 they had a match where Undertaker threw Mankind of the top of a 16 foot cage and into the announce table. The footage is pretty dramatic. The answer above gives a good explanation of why they are doing this.