I read an article today about “irony poisoning” and it presented me with a stark view of how the Internet, social media, and meme culture influence us as humans to a degree that is frankly, absurd.
I would consider myself to be about halfway to the point of being “chronically online” or so it’s called. I spend far too much time doom-scrolling on twitter dot com, but not enough time to feel triggered when somebody uses ketchup as blood in a TikTok and doesn’t put the typical “TW!!!!!!!” in the caption. I’m not falling victim to being hyper-politically correct at the expense of sounding like a complete idiot.
But I’m still no stranger to what is known as being “chronically online”. I’m constantly finding myself scrolling through TikTok at home, listening to internet culture podcasts during my very long commute, and scrolling through LinkedIn at work.
It’s inescapable, and it really never ends.
Occasionally I’ll find myself quoting Vines, such as that classic Gabriel Gundacker vine: “Dick Cheney made money off the Iraq War.” I must confess I barely even know who Dick Cheney is, and I barely even know when the Iraq War was. But I still say it because I think it’s funny, and I really like Gabriel Gundacker. I don’t really understand what I’m saying, I just say it. And I’ll keep saying it, until perhaps I’ll internalize it, thinking, “Maybe Dick Cheney really did make money off the Iraq War…”
By the way, that Vine reference I’m making is so incredibly niche, which is another interesting facet of Internet culture nowadays. To understand a meme or a joke you have to have knowledge of twenty other things beforehand. For example, Gabriel Gundacker, the creator of that vine, also made a fantastic but absolutely ridiculous album, “I Wanna Meet Richard Dreyfuss”. You have to understand so many things first to see the humor in this. It’s good you should listen to it.
But perhaps that’s a little silly. Similarly, there’s that viral TikTok from a while ago: “The birds work for the bourgeoisie.” Yet again, ridiculous, but is there an underlying message to retrieve from that? Probably not, it’s okay to make a joke for the joke’s sake, but it’s worth the effort to think about. Or is it?
Oftentimes I find there’s not a lot of thought going into anything that’s posted on social media, regardless of the medium. When there is some thought, it’s regarded as absolutely crazy, like, “Whoa, look at this hot take!” because it’s so rare. Which is sad, I know. And I’d like to see a change in that.
Anyways, let’s talk about irony poisoning, you know, as mentioned in the title of this blog post. In this article, I learned that my fav Pepe has been used as a symbol for Nazis online. What? Why? How? He’s just a sad little frog guy, but the presence and constant barraging of content with Nazism and white supremacy and other bad things have come to be associated with the meme, further “poisoning” what used to be jokes into genuine thoughts. One of my favorite notes:
It’s not clear how important social media is to any irony poisoning. Maybe there’s something about social media that enables the process, or maybe it just happens to play out there sometimes.
Amanda Taub and Max Fisher
But obviously social media has to have a large role in the effects of irony poisoning, right? And some platforms have to be more influential than others. Like, Pinterest as a platform can’t be as terrible and dark as Twitter or Reddit, right? Perhaps all corners of the Internet play some role in the eventual downfall into evil of some poor iPad kid turned social media intern.
Being chronically online is virtually (ha) impossible to avoid nowadays, especially for us young whippersnappers. In order for a marketer to effectively market, they’ve pretty much got to be online, especially with how fast trends are coming and going. If you’re a big brand, you’ve got to have such a quick turnaround if you want to stay trendy. You can’t be posting “Little Miss” memes a month from now; it’ll be dead and gone by then. My reference right there is about to be dead.
But, you also don’t want to be chronically online like that, because it can lead to such bad things, like turning into some sort of white supremacist. Now that’s bad. It’s hard to determine the effects the Internet and social media have on you until you purposefully force yourself out of it. I know lots of people who say things like, “Yeah I quit social media five months ago, and honestly, it was the best decision of my life. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.” And part of me is like, “God I wish that were me,” and the other part of me is like, “Wow you are so entitled and very out of touch now.” so it’s something I grapple with from time to time. Some days are worse than others.
One of the best works out there which truly shows being chronically online is Bo Burnham’s Netflix special “Inside”. Man, that thing hurt me when I first listened to it. Now I’ve been a fan of Bo Burnham for a long time, and his “We Think We Know You” piece is absolutely fantastic. But Inside is a perfect example of that sort of joke within a joke within a joke. I never thought I’d be sitting in my car singing along to a hip-hop rendition of “You’re really gonna make me vote for Joe Biden”. But alas. Here I am. It’s so niche, so pertinent, so poignant, and so, so relatable. That ending in Goodbye saying “Well, well, look who’s inside again, went out to look for a reason to hide again…” Ugh. Hits me right in the feels. That’s what being chronically online is, in a very artistic way.
Anyways, in the grand scheme of things, I think I’m relatively okay with the amount of time I spend online. Some days I wish I were active on every platform available so I can fully hone in on my online brand, but other days I want to delete everything and start over. I find it invaluable to find a good balance because too much turns you into an idiot and too little turns you into an idiot.
In another article from Columbia Journalism Review, we’ve got a clear look on why it’s important to follow trends closely but not too closely:
The best of these journalists are immersed in the internet but do not obsess over viral moments, which fly by too fast and seem, in isolation, to be trivial. By focusing on creators, communities, and the algorithm-based platforms that drive trends, these writers find ways to cut through the noise—and surface a deeper understanding of life, online and off.
Karen Maniraho
We’ve all got our own niche, our own experiences that are completely different from every person on the planet, and focusing on those differences can be a quick and easy way to find the beauty in the world, but of course, there is still a lot of hate found in trying to see those differences. So perhaps being chronically online, in an extreme case, truly does lead to this “irony poisoning”.
TikTok is especially interesting. It’s got so many users—an insane amount really, but those users are strangely just on TikTok. A creator who has 7 million followers on TikTok has under a million subscribers on YouTube. Granted, it does seem to be quite difficult to gain a large amount of subscribers on YouTube, but still, there’s quite the gap there. I love seeing a TikTok creator’s Instagram account in which their bio says something to the effect of: “TikTok: (7M+)” to prove that they’re a real creator or something. In the grand scheme of things, it seems like creators like this are still micro-celebrities, when on just one platform they have the majority of their followers. It’s a strange inconsistency between all the social media platforms, and I wish there was a way to even them out. On Linkedin I have 500+ connections; on Instagram I have around 230 followers, and on Twitter I have around 25. Instagram does seem to be dying these days, but still.
I think anyone older than Gen Z needs to figure out how to get their head in the digital game. TikTok, and for that matter anything Internet, is definitely not going anywhere, so you better get used to it (but of course not too used to it). I have 30-year-old professors who don’t know how to use Microsoft Teams, and that’s just plain ignorance. Sarah Schauer, on her podcast Violating Community Guidelines, said something to the effect of “You are too young to be this stupid on the Internet” and I wholeheartedly agree. Get with the program, dude. It’s not like you grew up without zip codes.
Anyways, me ranting again. Sorry. It’s just fascinating to see the effects being online has on people, especially in terms of memory, which brings in my next article, from The Guardian. While yes, Pepe can eventually make you a raging racist, your smartphone can also make you very forgetful:
So what happens when we outsource part of our memory to an external device? Does it enable us to squeeze more and more out of life, because we aren’t as reliant on our fallible brains to cue things up for us? Are we so reliant on smartphones that they will ultimately change how our memories work (sometimes called digital amnesia)? Or do we just occasionally miss stuff when we don’t remember the reminders?
Rebecca Seal
I have an Alexa at home. For some reason, I have yet to have repeated alarms, so I just set the same one every night, hoping I won’t forget to say “Hey Alexa, set an alarm for 6AM please!”
My partner, however, is smarter than me. He has repeated alarm, which goes off at 4:15AM every weekday. But I’ve seen him several times check it, to make sure it’s on, to make sure it didn’t somehow forget to stay on. But it’s a computer, of course it’s going to stay on. However as humans we are much less reliable. We forget all the time. I’m a complete believer in the idea that increased online activity has shortened people’s memories. Are we wired to not trust the reliability of computers, because we know we can’t trust the reliability of the wet squishy computers housed inside our skulls? I certainly don’t know the answer to that.
I am not, however, a believer in the idea that computers/technology are not to be trusted; it’s the other humans operating them that aren’t to be trusted.
That was a bit of a sidetrack I think. My point is, the Internet (and the other human users on it) can do a whole lot of things to you. It can make you a wildly racist person, a horrendously forgetful person, and probably an alcoholic to some degree. Weird. Kind of scary.
Don’t be chronically online.
Don’t be ignorant.
It’s all about balance, baby.
