Meme subreddits are chaos
Originally in response to a post by @kirinwoah:
dont ever use memes to make a genuine, serious point
obviously there are no hard rules in life, but ive been challenging myself with this rule and ive found it so helpful in making sure other people understand why im frustrated by things and where my emotions and viewpoints arise from.
a bit of a sad story but a few years ago, during my failed half coming-out to my parents, my ma asked me how long i knew i was something, to which i responded with the question "how long did you know you were straight?" i got that phrase from just some post i saw online, and rather than communicating the order of events that resulted in me realizing countless truths about myself and how that often relegated to me finding space to explore in cyberspace, all i had was a shitty, ineffective one-liner.
the problem with trying to sublimate complicated opinions and thoughts into funny one-liners is that all of the context—the personal context—evaporates. what matters more than seeing the quote "how long did you know you were straight" is the space and time i interacted with such idea, how i personally interpreted it, and the effects the idea had on me. in human conversation, we aren't trying to out-quip each other. we're trying to get to know each other dearly.
this rule helps you force yourself to consider and attempt to communicate your own interior position in whatever situation you are in. always try to unravel your own experience within a moment. doing this centers the human experience and personalizes/localizes your relationship to huge, confusing issues.
when i saw the title i thought it’s about meme subreddits
So, some meme subreddits don’t allow anything other than memes, like r/dankmemes. But the problem is that they’re a community. There will always be discussions in the comments.
The only other way to communicate at all is to make a meme. A normal person would just say “I like pineapple pizza”, but on r/Dankmemes, you find a template and then go to Photoshop to make an awful meme, “me when I say I like pineapple pizza”. wanna share a really cute picture of a cat? download wholesome100.jpeg and edit it to say “cute 100”. These entire subreddits are just like this - all extremely forced memes because normal posts are banned.
So people like SrGrafo make comics that are actually intentionally inorganically crafted meme templates, like how music artists manufacture tiktok trends; there are controversial templates like the Lisa Simpson presentation meme, where you’re allowed to type literally anything, eventually banned but new ones kept popping up; there’s a subreddit called r/MemeEconomy, where people create meme templates for the sake of blowing up, and people play a mini game where they “invest” in them.
Some templates become really really overused. People blame redditors for being unfunny and lazy, but in their defense, meme templates are their equivalent of grammar. Imagine having to invent new grammar every month because everyone was bored of the last one.
This gets worse when there’s a conversation, where you get memes that reply to other memes, a take about whatever topic the community is talking about, etc. This is the entire thing the moderators are trying to avoid, but all they did is restrict proper discussion posts.
I think years of browsing Reddit had an effect on me. I thought it was cool to sarcastically epicly roast your opponents as a kid. now I kept trying to cover myself in irony because I don’t have the emotional capacity to be empathetic.
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