The year 2020 kicked off with news about a potential World War III and the spread of the coronavirus. Despite the severity of these situations, everyone had a meme to share and laugh to have about everything going on in the world.
For example, the meme of Michael Jordan laughing in the first image and then crying in the second, with a caption that reads, “Me laughing at all the World War 3 memes Vs. me when I get that draft letter.” Then, there are all the coronavirus memes. I’m not going to lie, some of them are funny. However, it’s not okay to create racist memes, such as one that reads, “It’s a simple, we uh, eat the batman,” with a picture of the Joker wearing an Asian conical rice hat. You can clearly see the racism here.
All around the world memes have been posted, shared, talked about and laughed at. Why is it that in today’s society, we make funny memes of situations that are serious or dangerous? While I feel that memes are acceptable in general, when we use them to poke fun at serious topics it stops being funny.
Mohammed Elamin, a 14-year-old freshman at Fenway High, said “I don’t care. I mean if the joke is really funny, I’ll laugh. However, you can’t tell an autism joke in front of someone who has it.” Like many teenagers, Elamin doesn’t quite understand how jokes can affect someone. Teenagers don’t really understand the whole message behind the memes — they mostly look at them and just laugh.
Some of the World War III memes went as far as bringing up the topic of women’s rights. For example, a popular meme joked about how women have no rights, so they also can’t be drafted into the war. However, not everyone was laughing. Twitter user
Ryan Knight (@ProudResister) wrote, “War is not a [expletive] joke. It is a destructive and selfish act. 4,424 U.S. soldiers and an estimated 600K Iraqi civilians died in the Iraq war over WMDs that did not exist. So please stop with these #WWIII memes and instead call your Congress members and tell them #NoWarWithIran.”
Ryan Knight (@ProudResister) wrote, “War is not a [expletive] joke. It is a destructive and selfish act. 4,424 U.S. soldiers and an estimated 600K Iraqi civilians died in the Iraq war over WMDs that did not exist. So please stop with these #WWIII memes and instead call your Congress members and tell them #NoWarWithIran.”
A potential crisis that would actually mean something awful for our country’s future is not something to joke about. It shows incivility. You are being the definition of a jerk. Soldiers at war risk their lives every day. They are waking up and going to sleep with the fear of it being their last day. For teens to create memes and laugh at the idea of war is just plain cruel.
More recently, the coronavirus memes are amplifying stereotypes against Asians. Some people are refusing to eat Chinese food or be around Asian people at all. On the one hand, it’s understandable to be cautious. But, at the same time, you have to realize that while the virus started in China, that doesn’t mean that every Asian person has it. It made me very upset to hear that people are being rude to Chinese people. I can’t even lie, I also began to avoid Asian people when I first saw the memes, but I stopped doing it because I realized that it made the person feel hurt.
Teens have been insensitive to other topics that aren’t as timely as well, such as making fun of autistic people. It is highly disrespectful to make fun of a group that is already discriminated against. One meme shows a smiling Spongebob with no eyebrows and a caption that reads, “When the school shooter knocks on the door and the autistic kid opens the door.” This “joke” is that people with autism would be the first to die in a school shooting. Not only does it make fun of people with a developmental disorder, but it also makes light of mass shootings. This is highly ignorant and heartless.
Teens need to stop being so apathetic and actually try to understand the real message they send out when sharing and posting hurtful memes on topics. We can’t always fix the world and people, but being able to notice things that aren’t right is the way to help out. So when you see something fishy with a meme that teens are posting, call them out on it. Don’t like it or share it. Make them regret they ever posted it.