I open Instagram for a harmless scroll, expecting memes and maybe a thirst trap, and instead I’m slapped with breaking news: another wildfire, another city under water, another scientist on TV quietly losing faith in humanity. The planet’s basically boiling like someone left it on full flame. And there I am, staring at my reflection in the black mirror of my phone screen thinking, at least global warming didn’t smudge my mascara.
We are, quite literally, living through the apocalypse with. We can mourn the Great Barrier Reef in the morning and still get iced coffee with the correct ratio of self-delusion to hope by noon. We send memes about melting glaciers. We make playlists called “end of the world but make it aesthetic.” We’re watching the planet dissolve in real time, and somehow, we’re doing it with impeccable comedic timing.
Because that’s how we survive. We cope through chaos, laugh through despair, and schedule mental breakdowns between deadlines. The world’s on fire, and we’re still cracking jokes about it in the group chat. Not because we don’t care, but because if we stop laughing, we’ll start crying, and frankly babes, waterproof mascara is expensive.
Humour is our emotional duct tape; flimsy, improvised, but strong enough to keep us from collapsing. It’s how we stay human in a timeline that keeps glitching. Because yes, the planet is burning. But so is our group chat. And in both cases, there’s comfort in the warmth.
The world being in crisis is real, terrifying, and too big for one brain cell to hold.
Here’s the thing about the climate crisis: it’s massive. Catastrophic. Soul-crushing. And yet, somehow, incredibly difficult to process because our brains simply can’t hold that much dread. One minute you’re checking the weather, the next you’re learning that Siliguri is crying and the Amazon is coughing, and suddenly you’re paralysed, clutching your reusable tote bag like it’s a crucifix.
It’s hot. Too hot. Freak weather. Flash floods. The monsoon calendar is drunk. Birds are confused. Your iPhone weather app looks like it’s forecasting a breakdown. I can understand quantum computing faster than understanding why it’s 32°C in November. The news hits, and you think, “Should I panic now or later?” but later never comes, because we’re too tired to schedule anxiety.
We’re scared, but we don’t know where to put it. Climate dread doesn’t fit neatly in a to-do list. It’s abstract, omnipresent, and deeply inconvenient. It’s the background hum in every conversation, the existential static between memes. You can’t see it, but you feel it: that slow, suffocating awareness that everything is too much, and you’re too small.
And still, we care. We recycle (sometimes). We donate. We doomscroll. We cry quietly at photos of polar bears and then go back to work because capitalism doesn’t pause for panic attacks. We feel everything, all the time, but can’t do anything, most of the time. So we make jokes. Because it’s either that or meltdown, and babes, we’re already melting.
Compartmentalisation as our generation’s most toxic talent.
We’re the generation of open tabs; twenty emotional windows, all buffering. We split our feelings like Chrome tabs: one for existential dread, one for coursework, one for that crush who never texts back, and five that are just playing background panic. We are masters of emotional multitasking, Olympic-level compartmentalisers.
We care deeply. About everything. But also, we’re exhausted. You can’t constantly absorb bad news without short-circuiting, so we’ve learnt to break our hearts quietly, neatly, between classes. We can cry over coral reefs and still post selfies with good lighting. We can sign climate petitions and then go for a silly little walk for our silly little mental health. That’s the duality of modern existence: heartbreak and hydration.
This compartmentalisation isn’t apathy, rather it’s defence. It’s how you stop yourself from combusting. We fold the fear and tuck it away in sarcasm. We package our grief in irony. We balance despair with dance trends. We care so much that our only coping mechanism is pretending we don’t.
And maybe that’s what makes us terrifyingly tender. We haven’t gone numb, we’ve just learned how to survive feeling everything. We still care. We just care differently now: in fragments, in private, in memes.
Humour as a life raft in a flooded world.
Humour is the life raft we cling to while the water keeps rising. The rise of doom memes, apocalypse jokes, and “lol we’re all gonna die” Reels isn’t apathy; it’s alchemy. It’s how we turn helplessness into something survivable. Because if you can laugh at the void, the void loses a little of its power.
We’ve made a whole culture out of irony as insulation. “Global warming got me sweating and not in the fun way.” “The planet’s dying, might as well slay.” Beneath the punchlines is grief, but we dress it up in glitter and absurdity because laughter gives it edges we can hold without burning our hands.
Humour creates distance. It makes dread digestible. When everything feels unbearable, we turn it into content. We meme it, post it, share it, remix it, not to dismiss it but to collectively process it. Because fear feels lighter when it’s communal.
“If we don’t laugh, we’ll cry, and babes my waterproof mascara is expensive.” That’s not nihilism. That’s hope with eyeliner.
Doomscroll culture: a tragedy in infinite refresh.
You open X for one notification, and suddenly you’ve scrolled into despair: five hurricanes, three almost-wars, one influencer arguing about compost. It’s an unending feed of disaster wrapped in pastel infographics and chaos. You’re not supposed to know this much pain at once. But here we are, addicted to knowing, allergic to resting.
We’ve normalised world-ending headlines between cat videos. “Mass extinction event” right before “Look at this kitten in a frog hat.” The dissonance is dizzying. We’re emotionally ping-ponging between horror and serotonin, trying to find balance in a digital apocalypse.
And yet, there’s something weirdly beautiful about it. Shared doom builds community. We send each other memes about the end of the world, tag friends in climate Reels, collectively cope through pixels. It’s absurd, but it’s solidarity.
Still, doomscrolling has consequences. You go numb. You mistake awareness for action. You mistake exhaustion for apathy. The endless scroll turns empathy into background noise. We’re overstimulated, under-rested, and constantly oscillating between wanting to save the world and wanting to nap through it.
But we keep scrolling. Because hope, and horror, are both contagious.
Are we coping or avoiding? (Yes.)
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: we joke to survive, but sometimes we joke to avoid. The line between coping and denial is thinner than a paper straw. Humour can keep you afloat, but it can also stop you from swimming.
Still, I don’t think it’s empty irony. We joke, but we also show up. We sign petitions. We plant trees. We march. We recycle (badly, but with heart). We protest, then cry into tea afterwards. We are burnt out, heartbroken, terrified and we still care. We just express it differently.
Humour is our rebellion. It’s saying, “You can terrify us, but you can’t silence us.” We laugh because it gives us back some control. It’s the sound of defiance in a collapsing world.
So yes, we are coping. And yes, we are avoiding. But maybe that’s the only way to keep moving. Because hope doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it giggles in disbelief and keeps scrolling.
The mascara didn’t smudge, and neither did our hope.
The planet is burning, but so is our stubborn love for it. Our humour, our heartbreak, our memes, they’re all proof that we still give a damn. We compartmentalise, joke, doomscroll, repeat, not because we don’t care, but because caring constantly hurts, and we haven’t yet found a softer way to hold that hurt.
We laugh because it keeps us afloat. We meme because it keeps us connected. We cope because we must.
The world might be melting, but my mascara’s holding, and so is my hope. Because beneath the irony, beneath the jokes, beneath the exhaustion, there’s still a generation that refuses to go quietly.
In the end, our mascara might be waterproof, but our hearts aren’t. And maybe that softness, that refusal to go numb, is what will save us.
If you vibed with this chaos, this clarity, this climate-crisis-chic meltdown disguised as an article, you already know where the good stuff lives. Come find more unhinged honesty, soft rage, poetic rambling, and Gen-Z-approved delulu survival guides at Her Campus at MUJ, where we laugh, cry, cope, overthink, and overshare so you don’t have to. Written with love and existential SPF by Niamat Dhillon at HCMUJ. Stay hydrated. Stay hopeful. Stay slightly unhinged.