Irony culture is polluting the internet. Everywhere you go you see its tentacles, taking every good thing and getting ironic over it. As if saying something ironically is automatically a joke. Anyone remember those eyes when everyone was sarcastic all the time, as if that meant they were ‘tough’ or you were stupid for not reading between the lines? The internet’s irony culture of ‘shitposting’ is its heir. Like any major event, the terror attack on Ariana Grande’s concert became a canvas for these people to launch their jokes from. Actually, events like these – horrible, traumatic, death-filled – tend to be their favorite events.
Now, gallows humor is fine and all. Humor is important. It helps us keep a distance from things and break the ring of sacredness. If we can laugh at something, it’s not holy and we can criticize it and improve on it. Nothing should be beyond humor, but nothing is also beyond criticism. So now I’m about to explain why all these jokes about the terror attack are bad. Some people from the Irony Culture will call me ‘oversensitive’. I will call them ‘oversensitive’ for not being able to present a claim of their own.
I don’t know how to make this any clearer. A terror attack is traumatic. Many people will never be the same after this. It changed their lives forever. The songs and the artist will forever be connected in their heads to an attack whose purpose is to install fear and dread in them. 22 people have died, and that means at least 88 – and I’m being extremely minimal here – will live with a permanent loss nothing can replace.
Just to show you how trauma works, I live in Israel. Many here live under constant thread of rockets and are always afraid of the sound of the alarm. Some time ago there was a Post-Apoc LARP (Live-Action Roleplaying) called Sunburn. The organizers didn’t tell the players that there will be alarms. Not only the fictional alarms triggered these people, many also thought they were real. It wrecked their whole experience.
If you still don’t get what ‘trauma’ means, just ask someone to violently beat you up.
As I said, humor about anything is fine. However, we need to be careful when and where we post our gallows humor. Right now, when we’re still suffering from the fallout of that attack is not the time. That attack is fresh in people’s minds. They still need to truly realize that, yes, this happened and they are mortal and someone can blow them.
The internet is an unregulated mass communication tool that must not be censored, but that’s not a reason to spread it all over. We control the content we see only halfway. If I enter a meme site with hoping to manage my stress thanks to surviving a terror attack and I see memes about a terror attack and all the trauma rises up – who’s to blame? Why must it be this way?
Some did get that perhaps it’s nicer to wait a bit before making fun of other people’s trauma, so even that became a joke:
Another important element of gallows humor is that you need a joke. Without saying something actually funny about the subject, all you do is make fun of dark topics which cause pain and suffering to everyone – including you. There is no joke in this picture, unless the joke is about how memesters don’t have anything else to do but produce worthless memes. Then again, I think they’re too sensitive to actually joke about themselves.
I don’t know. I get it that you don’t like Pop music. Some of us are still stuck in the days of ‘real music’ where only Foo Fighters were considered good. Still, where’s the joke here? You found a pseudo-clever way of telling people you dislike Ariana Grande by making fun of a terrible event. I’m not sure how else to classify this behavior other than being an asshole and inconsiderate.
Oh man, I can’t help it. This is Dr. Strangelove-level of funny. Get it? The joke is, Grande is a horrible singer (Pop music isn’t real music, remember) and people dying – especially in terror attacks – is funny! Death is so funny, in fact, that we make sure everyone can experience it if they want to using assisted suicide! Aren’t funerals only second to the Holocaust in their funny-ness?
It’s kind of odd. Someone would actively take an image and write a semi-ironic text about how someone not dying is a bad thing. I’m trying to understand the psyche of doing this, of finding the bummer over someone not-dying a sentiment worth showing the world. Better yet, contextualize it in a meme so you could laugh about it and be ironic. There are so many layers of irony here I’m not sure what the joke is. Yes, some memes’ source of funny is only because they reference a pattern. Lord knows I find the ‘cracking open a cold one’ meme hilarious, but that’s only because I really like beer. Besides, the joke is rarely something cruel. Since there is no funny here, what is the joke?
“Oh, lighten up!” they say and I wish I could – or I wish I wouldn’t, since my ways of having include more than finding terror attacks funny. Every act of communication has a purpose. The nature of being is communicative. We communicate humor, emotions and ideas. By understanding what and why we communicate we can communicate better and face the communication of others better.
So I’m trying to get underneath all this humor. Since its surface is incredibly unfunny, maybe by getting down to it I can find insight into an alien culture. Sadly I face an empty well devoid of funny and full of laughter at the theatre of tragedy and the carnival of carnage that is terror and violence. If terror and violence were that funny, they wouldn’t be staples in horror films. Moreover, if you didn’t view this post as an attack – and this post claims you’re insensitive, unethical and that your sense of humor is dead like Nietzsche’s horse – you wouldn’t get all defensive over it.
The funeral of the irony culture will be a celebration. Bring your own stereo.