Humour is a beautiful thing. One of my favourite qualities in any human being is their ability to laugh at themselves. It shows that they don’t take themselves too seriously. The world is humorous in nature, our existence on this earth is ironic: we are so insignificant, yet we convince ourselves of our undying significance; we feel humongous, yet we are specs; we imitate concrete buildings, yet we are dust. The absurdity of our existence is truly funny. When we laugh and connect over things like this, it makes it all a little easier to swallow.
The manner in which we connect online is through meme culture. Friends coming together from different parts of the world to tag each other in a humorous photo, a relatable feeling. Really it is a statement proclaiming “This made me think of you,” which is quite lovely after all. I see no problem in a connection such as this. What I have a problem with is what content we find “relatable.” Through personal experience, I realized what I found most funny were jokes that shrunk me down to something small and useless. All of our “jokes” are extremely self-deprecating:
Okay yes, dark humour is funny. I do believe that crude, dark humour is a vital component and valued member of the comedy family. But the problem is how often it is occurring. With anything, if you have enough of it, it will become a part of you. For example, imagine if every day, you had to read an article about an elephant. Day after day, just elephants. Your mind is bound to drift to elephants more often, you are bound to see this elephant-article-habit as an (at least, minor) part of your identity. This happened to me with memes and self-deprecating talk. No I did not become a walking, talking meme. I didn’t change my name to Pepe the frog and dab with every interaction I had. But I did view myself as a useless being. I was laughing about it, making jokes about it, but there is truth behind the things we laugh at. When receiving compliments I would respond with “Why? I am honestly scum.” And no, I don’t think I ever really meant the words I said, but I didn’t realize how lifeless negative talk was, even if it was to laugh at oneself. Little by little, as I continued to make jokes that portrayed me as small and worthless, I subconsciously viewed myself as this. When a boy showed affection toward me, a voice in my head would wonder why, as I was merely some awkward, unattractive, unproductive girl. None of this was even true, really. But my brain would hypnotize me, even if I was just joking. The problem with making something negative humorous is that humour is always popular. And it should never be trendy, to be wasting away the most precious years of your life. When did it become admirable or cute to brag about doing nothing…all the time? “All I do is eat and sleep lol I want to die kill me lol.” We are in what are known as the most amazing years of our life. Why are we saying things like this? We are constantly relating to ourselves as trash, and you know what? That is rude as hell. Because I truly believe I would never say that to the face of someone else. But when it is a joke, reflected internally, it is permissible.
I was talking to a good friend of mine who struggles a lot with mental health, and while conversing with her about this topic, she mentioned that she found these memes comforting. When she would see large populations of people relating to anxious and depressing feelings she had felt before, it made her feel comforted – knowing others felt the same way she did. That humour helped her mental illness value this, and I honestly don’t believe that dark memes are awful. I will continue to giggle at things, sometimes, because they do honour the fact that we are not perfect. At times, we are lazy. And yes, we do sleep a lot. But not all the time. Our flaws do not make us worthless or unworthy of beautiful things. Our flaws should be laughed at and honoured with a photo of Mr Krabs on the internet, but they are not all that we are. Feel comforted knowing that others have flaws too. It’s not a bad thing; it’s called connection. But remember to get off Instagram and accept compliments. Because nihilist memes and all, you are so, very, worthy of beautiful things.