Slick Butter
Member
Xavier: Renegade Angel is my favorite cartoon
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
The Washington Post: Why is millennial humor so weird?
- Thread starter benjipwns
- Start date
That's normal, only weirdos don't like Xavier
I was talking about this with friends last night, actually. The explosion of memes in the last decade-plus has been unbelievable. To think we went from these 2000s memes to what's out there today... One can certainly draw direct connections between the past and present of 'meme culture,' but the seemingly infinite variety and quantity of today's memes and the ever-accelerating pace of their evolution are really quite unprecedented. If someone from 2007 time traveled to now, they might be able to recognize something like doggo as an evolution of LOLcats (and later, Doge) type humor, but the vast majority of memes would be utterly incomprehensible to them. Like you said, even Millennials already have trouble keeping up with Gen Z-produced memes. The stuff that comes through my social media feeds has me running to Know Your Meme more and more often nowadays.
Vipershark
Member
uh oh here comes an unironic explanation of meme culture, im explaining the joke please forgive me
Reading this excerpt here:
I laughed pretty hard because I know the exact meme in question, but the problem with the explanation is that the meme is not "devoid of meaning", nor was it inexplicably popular.
If you've used facebook for any amount of time, particularly with old people or "hood" people on your timeline, you've surely come across those awfully compressed, horribly jpeg artifacted "normie memes" which feature things like Minions saying something stupid with the description saying something like "Like my page to win a free iphone" to try to trick dumb people into liking their page and then there's the ever infamous "smash dat mf like button" and Timberland-wearing-SpongeBob hood memes which were super popular for a while and still get reposted.
The "hey beter" meme is clearly making fun of those normie memes, having random characters say stupid phrases usually followed by "like for an iphone 4" or "smash dat like button", etc etc while having their images be just as horribly artifacted for comedic effect.
A lot of "millenial jokes" follow similar lines, starting out as making fun of a particular thing or someone making a clever joke, which is then morphed over and over by countless people until it's unrecognizable yet still hilarious, because you understand the references to the source material.
It's really not that hard to get where it comes from; even Tim and Eric does the same sort of thing, making fun of bad low budget daytime television commercials, for example, on the "It's Free Real Estate!" skit.
If you don't get it, you probably just don't use the internet enough.
Reading this excerpt here:
I laughed pretty hard because I know the exact meme in question, but the problem with the explanation is that the meme is not "devoid of meaning", nor was it inexplicably popular.
If you've used facebook for any amount of time, particularly with old people or "hood" people on your timeline, you've surely come across those awfully compressed, horribly jpeg artifacted "normie memes" which feature things like Minions saying something stupid with the description saying something like "Like my page to win a free iphone" to try to trick dumb people into liking their page and then there's the ever infamous "smash dat mf like button" and Timberland-wearing-SpongeBob hood memes which were super popular for a while and still get reposted.
The "hey beter" meme is clearly making fun of those normie memes, having random characters say stupid phrases usually followed by "like for an iphone 4" or "smash dat like button", etc etc while having their images be just as horribly artifacted for comedic effect.
A lot of "millenial jokes" follow similar lines, starting out as making fun of a particular thing or someone making a clever joke, which is then morphed over and over by countless people until it's unrecognizable yet still hilarious, because you understand the references to the source material.
It's really not that hard to get where it comes from; even Tim and Eric does the same sort of thing, making fun of bad low budget daytime television commercials, for example, on the "It's Free Real Estate!" skit.
If you don't get it, you probably just don't use the internet enough.
IrishNinja
Member
fuck me
as a gen x'er i never gave a moment's thought to "what do boomers think of ren & stimpy", why would anyone do so here
fuck that, why read the washington post at all
as a gen x'er i never gave a moment's thought to "what do boomers think of ren & stimpy", why would anyone do so here
fuck that, why read the washington post at all
Lord Ghirahim
Member
Cameron122
Member
Because we can't fucking stop eating avocado toast
Blargonaut
Banned
Can't believe we're teaching them to appreciate games as art
Come on now. Avacado toast is awesome. Just don't pay $9 for it.
Skiptastic
Member
I don't know but it was one of the best shows ever.
Intheflorsh
Banned
Outside of Tim and Eric Nite Live, I would agree.
Millennial humour is weird and ironic because the world they live in is weird and ironic, it's as simple as that. We met things like 9/11, the great recession, wars in the middle east, the constant reduction of opportunity and a sense of impending doom with humour that reflects it. On the political side of things both sides see the other as an absurdist, irrational force so political humour reflects it.
Essentially, it's hard to have a sitcom where a white middle class family goes through mundane situations before everything wraps up nicely in the end when most people have never experienced and will never experience such things.
Essentially, it's hard to have a sitcom where a white middle class family goes through mundane situations before everything wraps up nicely in the end when most people have never experienced and will never experience such things.
Monocle
Member
The main reason millennial humor rubs me the wrong way is that it's anti-intellectual. Most ordinary jokes rely on a certain cleverness of construction, complexity of meaning, or at least a shared lexicon among the audience. The absurdism that is a hallmark of millennial humor abolishes meaning. It neutralizes wit and knowledge with its mockery of the very language and symbols that convey coherent ideas.
I think I actually hate it. The laziest lolrandom strains of it, at least. It's nihilistic. It denies the worth of things that add value to life.
I think I actually hate it. The laziest lolrandom strains of it, at least. It's nihilistic. It denies the worth of things that add value to life.
Good lord, its just fun ironic memes, get over yourself
Nonintellectual =/= anti-intellectual
But I'd disagree that millennial humor is nonintellectual for the most part or certainly no more nonintellectual than other generations' humor. Pretty much all of the big Adult Swim shows heavily draw upon big ideas that may appear hidden at first glance. Eric Andre may look crazy, but his show is a reaction against and satire of the stale format of late night television. Rick and Morty constantly references existentialist philosophy and finds surprising humanity in absurd realities. Shorts like Too Many Cooks, which is hard not to view in light of postmodern hyperrealism, and This House Has People In It, whose unsettling tone is heavily influenced by pioneering video artists such as Bill Viola's early work, are other examples that could only be produced by minds familiar with such high concepts. I could discuss more, but I don't have the time right now
Perhaps the final products don't clearly reflect their background, but it is there behind the shocking or random elements. Millennial humor is nihilistic because it comes from the minds of people who are well read enough to recognize the validity of said absurdity in the face of an uncertain or insignificant world in which their actions might prove meaningless anyway.
Abstruse Moose
Member
Cam we please start blaming the next generation for everything wrong with the world yet? Those iGen fuckers.
Blargonaut
Banned
How many Millennials does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
2, meme
2, meme
Prett sure there were at least 4 time magazine covers dedicated to that very subject.
Is that why gen xers stopped subscribing?
Zen_Arcade
Banned
The whole point of absurdism is to point out that nothing actually has any meaning and the idea that is does is a joke in itself. Or at the very least, the idea that we will never be able to know, that it's pointless to try to figure it out, and to ascribe any rule set is pointless as well.
If you really think it's anti intellectual, you're kind of missing the point.
Lucky Seven
Banned
Ahhhhh, generation-speak. Very accurate to the time, always making insightful observations.
I'm not sure that doing something very strange and random is a new way of doing humor. The style has matured but we've been adding ridiculous fifth faces to Mt Rushmore for decades. Likewise dark humor has been a thing for a while.
I feel like modern (I guess post- Adult Swim?) comedy does two big things that I don't remember seeing much of before. First, it will intentionally run a joke into the ground. The standard example is probably the Family Guy bit where Peter hurts himself and then sits there rocking back and forth while holding his leg. Whatever-it-is is maybe a little funny at first, then funnier as it keeps going, then really annoying because it's been going forever, then funny again because oh my god they're really doing this. Second, jokes will be presented alongside something which is otherwise totally serious. Like with Archer, where the characters are joking in the middle of a seriously-presented shootout, or the show rapidly switches back and forth between serious and funny.
There are some other, minor things, but some of this strikes me as a fairly natural progression over time. Comedy is much faster now, but so is everything else -- action movies and dramas are also much faster and more tightly edited. This is possible because audiences and creators have developed an understanding of the medium and a sort of shorthand that lets them cut out elements that didn't directly contribute but which were useful for context. I think some things like Tim and Eric are basically just this -- they work now, and wouldn't have worked before, because they rely on audiences having certain ideas about how comedy works and is supposed to work.
I feel like modern (I guess post- Adult Swim?) comedy does two big things that I don't remember seeing much of before. First, it will intentionally run a joke into the ground. The standard example is probably the Family Guy bit where Peter hurts himself and then sits there rocking back and forth while holding his leg. Whatever-it-is is maybe a little funny at first, then funnier as it keeps going, then really annoying because it's been going forever, then funny again because oh my god they're really doing this. Second, jokes will be presented alongside something which is otherwise totally serious. Like with Archer, where the characters are joking in the middle of a seriously-presented shootout, or the show rapidly switches back and forth between serious and funny.
There are some other, minor things, but some of this strikes me as a fairly natural progression over time. Comedy is much faster now, but so is everything else -- action movies and dramas are also much faster and more tightly edited. This is possible because audiences and creators have developed an understanding of the medium and a sort of shorthand that lets them cut out elements that didn't directly contribute but which were useful for context. I think some things like Tim and Eric are basically just this -- they work now, and wouldn't have worked before, because they rely on audiences having certain ideas about how comedy works and is supposed to work.
These comics are bottom of the barrel as far as humour goes. I'll take shitty memes over this every day.
RipperGrim
Member
I always think about how weird and odd Monty Python was, people think today that hum our is random and odd but man that show is like the blue print for random shit and it was made in the 70's. Not sure if it's more British humour vs American humour but I feel comedy that is popular on the internet has existed in some form for quite a while.
ElectricBlanketFire
Member
Now THIS is millennial humor.
Holy fuck lmao
Lord of Castamere
Member
Surprise humor is key to millennial's. I actually think that's one of the things that spurred humor reviews and abridged series. A physiological trick wherein your mind thinks it's watching something else, thus is more easily surprised by the humor. Same with Tim and Eric. which started as fake commercials. By, more or less, pretending to be something else, it sets you up for the surprise, because it breaks what your brain anticipates.
Eric Andre is a good summary of millenial humour
Its ?, My parents can't understand it at all but it makes me cry of laughter
Finale Fireworker
Member
My friends and I concluded, at least personally, this brand of humor is so funny to us because we are all hopeless and critically depressed and it helps mute the unending rattles of our deep, deep self-hatred. We are extremely overworked with bleak prospects and constantly being told we are wrong or weird or worse - entitled.
When everything depresses you, and everyone hates you, weird things are funny. It's all just so detached and horrific that you have to laugh. It's all you have left.
Every morning, my friend texts me "rise and grind."
And I text back "another day another dollar."
Then we ponder the existential fear that we, ourselves, are expendable memes nobody will remember three years from now.
Ah, look at me now, getting nostalgic!
When everything depresses you, and everyone hates you, weird things are funny. It's all just so detached and horrific that you have to laugh. It's all you have left.
Every morning, my friend texts me "rise and grind."
And I text back "another day another dollar."
Then we ponder the existential fear that we, ourselves, are expendable memes nobody will remember three years from now.
Ah, look at me now, getting nostalgic!
Raylan Targaryen
Member
i usually think these are dumb but this has me dying
HawksWinStanley
Member
What happened to that show? I thought we were slated to get another season and then it just never released and no real word about it. I've seen him in a couple things recently too.
VistraNorrez
Member
September 28th. Although there is a special on the 21st that catches up with people from past episodes.
TheWasTheJoke
Member
Any article which makes sweeping generalisations about hundred of millions of people is instantly trash.
The Greek Freak
Member
*Buddah stance guy with exploding brain*
Pee'ing as loud as possible and groaning loudly while doing so.
Tal Shiar Agent
Banned
I was born in 92 and I don't get half of this shit. It seems like what some people are calling Millennial memes ("dank" memes) are really GenZ memes. Millenials end in 96/97 and all of this shit seems popular mostly with the under 20 crowd.
Nikodemos
Member
Raylan Targaryen
Member
when people make anti-millennial posts its usually referring to anyone born after like 1985. My unborn child will be referred to as a millennial
Similar threads
- Locked