My Meme Collection is a Disturbing Window into my Soul
But it also means I love you
If you and I are friends, there’s a good chance I’ve sent you a meme at some point. Most times it’s because I saw something that made me think of you. Hey, it’s not my fault that a meme about trash bags filled with used hot dogs makes me think of you.
Sharing memes is an entire industry now. According to this article on sci-tech-daily.com, a million memes are shared daily on Instagram, and 74% of people send memes to make others laugh. Despite the irreverent nature of the memes I send, that’s an incredibly wholesome statistic.
Irreverent humor is my absolute favorite thing. Maybe it’s because I’m a nihilist at heart, but I think most rules are arbitrary and I love the idea of taking something society takes seriously and turning it sideways. I resent that I was raised to get in line and to do what society thinks I should do, and a bit of insolence makes me feel better.
While I am a recovering alcoholic, I have hobbies other than writing about sobriety. As much as I love writing introspective pieces about what makes me tick, I also like to let my weird side out once in a while. I enjoy painting, growing bonsai, and collecting memes that make you laugh. I used to share them on Twitter, but fuck that place. These days the only social media I engage with is here on Substack.
I’ve been saving memes for years. Sometimes I make my own, but it’s hard to compete with the volume of hilarity already out there. People ask me why I save so many, and my answer is that I never know when they’re going to come in handy. The problem is I can rarely find the one that applies and I have to go find it again.
Using pictures or memes to share information is called the picture superiority effect. A picture will stick to your brain better than words.
Humans now communicate through text more than verbally. Life is constantly pulling us in 17 different directions, we’re endlessly distracted, and spend less time focused on any single thing. We don’t have time to convey all the emotions and inflections that would have previously been made visible through an in-person conversation or even a long-form letter. Instead, we send a few words in a text and move on with our day.
The original term “meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins in his work The Selfish Gene, way back in 1976. The term has evolved greatly since then, but at its root, a meme is an idea that can be transmitted. The Wikipedia definition is “a cultural item (such as an idea, behavior, or style) that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms.”
In short, it’s a way to convey a lot of information with a bit of context. According to this article, memes are easy to share, carry an element of surprise, and…
…are so contagious because they tap into basic human desires and emotions. Many memes are humorous and are designed to be easily understood and shared with others. They often use cultural references, jokes, and other forms of humour to make them more relatable and appealing to a wide audience.
Memes spread just like infectious diseases. They propagate in a viral pattern, “infecting” individuals as they travel, and it feels incredibly wholesome to think of a viral smile traveling around the globe. Once a meme has been transferred to enough people, its continued spread is inevitable and untraceable. People change the memes and they evolve, moving from community to community, adapting to new cultural meanings and connotations.
In the 33 seconds of research I did for this article, it turns out there’s really no way to track them. Between social media, screen captures, and their own evolutions, they are free to roam the internet.
There’s nothing obscene in my collection, but there is a ton of dark humor. A few months ago, I handed my phone to my father-in-law to show him some pictures of his grandchildren doing something cute. He proceeded to scroll casually past the pictures of his grandchildren and stumbled upon this meme:
He didn’t say anything, but his eyes got big and he started wheezing. He kept looking at my phone, snickering, then looking away again. The more he looked at it the harder he laughed. Through tears of laughter, he looked at me and said, “Jesus Christ! You’re scum! You are such scum!” We laughed for an hour because he is my people.
It’s weird to look back through my camera roll from the last decade. Memes are mixed in with touching pictures of my kids, family trips to the park, sunsets, and campfires. I see school pictures of the kids, then our trip to Disney, then a Cheese Stick Care Bear, and a headline from The Onion. My camera roll is like a box of chocolates: mostly sweet but beware of nuts or cherries or coconut, and you may get sick.
When I make a new friend, which isn’t often, as soon as I feel it’s safe I start peppering them with memes when they even loosely fit into a conversation.
There are also times when I want someone to know I’m thinking of them but don’t have the time to do a deep dive into what’s happening with me. That’s when I send a random or thoughtful meme.
When you start getting these dank memes from me, you know I love you. I know they’re pretty fucked up, so I only send them to people that have the same fucked up sense of humor.
Like this:
Several years ago I worked with someone who didn’t understand sarcasm or dark humor. He was a good person, but he didn’t understand me. I’d make an offhanded comment, and he’d just stare at me like I was crazy. I realized I could never be friends with anyone who doesn’t glean the vast majority of their sense of humor from dreadful, irreverent humor.
But cascading memes are even better. Plenty of posts on the internet list memes that are related to one another, and I love lists of memes. Lists work in the same way verbal comedy works. Like a single joke, a single meme can be funny. But when they start piling up, that’s when the real fun begins. It’s why comedians always use a warm-up comic. Dank memes keep getting funnier until my wife kicks me out of bed.
The older I get, the more ridiculous and absurd the world seems to be. Laughing is a coping mechanism, but nowhere near the most unhealthy one.
Just know that if I’m sending you this kind of nonsense regularly, I trust you with the darkest, weirdest parts of me.
Just for fun, here are a few I’ve been carrying around.
FYI:
I plan to follow the all-meme substack that you totally need to create
Great piece. Yeah memes seem to be the quickest and most effective way to convey the utter absurdity of the world. Laughed at the ones you presented here. A ton of power in a meme too. A meme can change the culture. I created a few recently, and it's kind of a glorious feeling actually when ya get it right! Same sort of feeling you get when you know you've written a great essay.