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Is Sharing ‘Dark’ Memes A True Reflection Of Our Anxieties?

Memes have become cultural souvenirs for millennials to express how they feel.

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Browsing through the internet, you happen upon a picture of a frog in a hoodie, encapsulating every ounce of what you’re feeling. Motivated by a rush of dopamine, your thumbs automatically move toward the ‘share’ button.

You caption the picture on your timeline: ‘This is so me(me)’.

Memes have become cultural souvenirs for millennials to express how they feel.
(Photo: Facebook/Evil Kermit)

The internet is a treasure trove, and memes have become cultural souvenirs for people – especially millennials belonging to the ‘meme generation’ – to express how they feel.

These memes are often comics about social anxiety, gifs about nervous breakdowns or a snippet of text about a looming quarter life crisis. The darker the humour in the meme, the greater the chances of it being successful.

But when our Facebook timelines have come to resemble our personal journals, can these ‘dank af’ memes actually be an indication of our state of mind?

Reach for the Moon, Land Among the Stars

The notion that millennials are struggling, or are lonely and depressed, has often been parroted and repeated to death. We have also been called entitled, lazy and spoilt – an accusation that may not be completely unfounded, but is an unfair generalisation still.

Popular British-American author and motivational speaker Simon Sinek pegs the problem at parents telling millennials they’re ‘special’, only for the real world to eventually come as a rude shock.

Evidently, this is a sentiment that the millennial meme-generation relates to:

Memes have become cultural souvenirs for millennials to express how they feel.
(Photo: Facebook/Cyanide & Happiness)

‘I Share Because I Relate’

The fundamental criteria for a good meme is for it to be relatable. Something as random as a picture of a dog has meme potential, if the coinciding message is identifiable.

Several millennials The Quint spoke to, confessed to taking solace in the number of people sharing these ‘existential’ memes. It made them feel ‘less alone’.

The sicker and more disturbing the meme is, the more comforted I feel inside. It’s like the “Oh so I’m not the only one” or “There are people who are more f***ed than I am” sort of comfort. I feel memes are an anaesthetic for us, the underachievers.
Agni Deb Barman, 23 

Another millennial conceded that she liked to share or consume certain ‘dark memes’ because they mirrored how she felt.

I share them because I feel that way. Not all the time, but quite often. I take even more solace in the number of people feeling the same way.
Anadya Singh, 22
Memes have become cultural souvenirs for millennials to express how they feel.
(Photo: Facebook/Wholesome Memes)

There’s No App for Job Satisfaction

There’s no denying that we’re a generation of instant gratification. For us, a sexual/romantic encounter is only a right swipe away and a Facebook notification instantly diverts our attention.

Millennials can’t cope with not getting immediate results, says Sinek. We, therefore, haven’t cultivated enough patience for ‘job satisfaction’ or ‘finding love or joy’.

These memes are funny, but they definitely reflect deep-seated fears. We’re all stuck in dead-end jobs, reading articles about how we should quit our jobs and ‘live’. But these are articles written by other people in dead-end jobs.
Sanya Jain, 23

A new report states that Indian millennials have the longest working hours and work an average of 52 hours a week – data that contradicts the ‘lazy’ label.

The best case scenario Sinek offers is that millennials, across the world, will go through their lives never really finding joy. “They’ll never really find deep fulfilment in work or life,” he says in an interview to Inside Quest, that went viral recently.

Memes have become cultural souvenirs for millennials to express how they feel.
(Photo: Facebook/Incidental Comics)

Taking Refuge in Humour

The humour quality in these memes makes everyday struggles less daunting. If you can laugh about pressure, anxiety and varying degrees of existential crises, it doesn’t seem as overwhelming.

It also helps to see that a million others across the world are simultaneously experiencing the same thing.

Memes are perhaps the only acceptable outlet for a wide range of anxieties. When placed under the garb of humour or what some might call ‘dark humour’, it’s alright to whine. Social media has minimum standards of expression and after a certain age you cannot express anxiety unless it’s acceptable.
Sameer Gardner, 23
Memes have become cultural souvenirs for millennials to express how they feel.
(Photo: Facebook/Silencing the Storm)

It’s true that the internet has provided the perfect stage to channel as well as express some of these worries and anxieties – a privilege that ‘baby boomers’ were perhaps denied.

But if more and more young adults confess to finding solace in this ‘dark humour’, should it be a warning sign, or are we just being ‘entitled’ and ‘lazy’?

(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)

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Topics:  Social Media   Mental Health   Memes 

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