For those who spend a lot of time involved in activism, says Tumblr's resident meme archivist Amanda Brennan, "no thoughts head empty" can be a form of release and self-care during a stressful period. On Tumblr, where the stereotypical user is fiercely passionate about social issues, people are still frequently sharing memes about not thinking. “If someone takes it as ‘I’m going to pull away and disconnect and not think through important issues,’ that’s someone who has the luxury to do so.” “It’s some people saying, ‘Wouldn’t this be great? Too bad it’s not real,’” says Milner. It’s somewhere between idle escapism and gallows humor. “No thoughts head empty” isn’t a worldview. And it’s easier to do if you’re not one of the millions of people risking their health to earn the minimum wage in a global pandemic.īut the real smooth-brained move is to take memes at face value. Everyone has something to give.” To shut down is to fail to take the stakes of international calamity seriously. How can anyone disengage in a moment like this? “Now is not the time for cynicism or hopelessness,” US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) wrote after Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing in September. Historians will look back at 2020’s protests over racial injustice and unprecedented election turnout as paradigm-shifting moments in participatory democracy. The easy criticism of these memes is that the people sharing them earnestly are either very privileged or similarly out of touch. A desire to return to the past is one many people can relate to or share, so thus, it becomes a common trend in memes as well.” “Two of the biggest themes we've observed this year in meme culture are nostalgia and escapism. “2020 has definitely been a year of ‘turn off your brain’ kinda memes,” says KnowYourMeme associate editor Zach Sweat. Across the web, on Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, or Tumblr, commenters complain they are fed up with living through history, that they would please like to opt out. It was a lot-more than any one person could process, let alone explain. It’s an aspirational peace of mind, like when a kid plugs their ears mid-lecture to say, “ la la la, I can’t hear you,” but really, they still can they’re just making a statement about what they want.īy June of this year, the jab-jab-uppercut of high-level happenings had stupefied many of the folks perennially jacked in to feeds: the Australian wildfires, the pandemic, police brutality, the economy’s collapse, hell, the murder hornets. Tasked with processing so much news, so quickly, on such a high level, the Very Online in our midst-the ones who medicate Twitter vertigo by scrolling TikTok, who blunt the influx of heinous headlines with happy Instagram chemicals-are memeing about not processing anything at all.
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