When the World Is Crazy, Memes Provide Emotional Relief

When planes rammed into the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, my college classmates and I stared at television screens in a combination of horror and disbelief. When we turned to the computers in our journalism classroom and attempted to get on the World Wide Web to see more reports, the wheel of death simply spun — this once-in-a-lifetime event literally broke the then-fledgling internet.

Broadcast news offered a singular source of information for most people in the aftermath of 9/11, but once the television was turned off, we could only lean on a local network of family, friends, colleagues, and classmates to truly make sense of the horrible act. Outside of New York, most people processed their deepest emotions in closed circles rather than in public.

Today, young people can make sense of the world around them in the public sphere, thanks to a much larger and more powerful internet, with social media and memes circulated on it. Memes serve as digital artifacts that are sometimes seemingly simple, often humorous, but generally carry a deeper meaning. While memes can unite masses of users with their catchy sayings and funny visuals, for young people, they’re often a way to process negative feelings and attempt to understand potentially chaotic, disturbing, or confusing circumstances.

While looking at memes may feel like a passive process, memes might be one of the best representations of “prosumption,” or the process by which patterns of creating and consuming media interact and often impact one another. The act of creating and consuming memes can not only impact emotions and how they affect the self-expression of one’s identity, but they can also bring a sense of closeness with others experiencing the same content. In his study of young Tumblr users, researcher Julian Burton noted that users saw their digital communities as spaces where they could be their authentic selves, unlike other physical spaces where they might be judged for being who they are. The ability to create for themselves and each other served as the foundation for a safe community.

The young people in Burton’s study noted that creating memes that may seem nonsensical, dark, or odd offers a way to talk about the impacts of socioeconomic and/or political realities on youth, which can often manifest as anxiety or depression. On meme usage and how it helps to deal with difficult emotions, Burton said: “as one teenaged Tumblr user I interviewed explained, in a world that sometimes seems specifically orchestrated to put young people under unmanageable pressure yet continues to treat mental health issues as shameful, the most radical response is for young people to speak openly about the issues they face.”

Some young people create memes that balance humor or playfulness while still claiming the seriousness of the topic at hand, particularly when it comes to political content.

Researcher Joel Penney examined the digital practices and political expression of young adults and found that memes often provided young people a bit of comic relief from the more challenging aspects of politics. They offer a way to laugh at the hardship of weathering change after change, upset after upset.

One interviewee said: “I feel like it’s so hard not to be funny in this situation because it’s almost like it’s not real... There’s a new headline every day, and it’s always something ridiculous that you’re like, there’s no way like this is really, like, just another day... So I feel like just recognizing the fact that things that are going on are so crazy that it’s almost like they’re not real... that you can poke fun at them.”

While it may seem like the public sphere, the internet and social media feel like a safe space to many young people — one where they can be themselves and use the affordances of the medium to express their thoughts. In this digital world, memes may actually serve as supportive mechanism for young people who are unsure of how to make sense of what’s happening around them. While they may seem simple and superficial, memes often perform some emotional heavy lifting, and it’s important to recognize the weightier messages they often convey.