“It’s a bad joke if you have to explain it”

Disclaimer: I did not originally create the memes that I am about to show you. The content of them might be inappropriate for certain people. You can definitely express anything you think of about it. Ready?

American writer David Foster Wallace was very concerned with television entertainment culture in America when it was emerging. In 1993, he published an article E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction explaining his observations and concerns. He pointed out how metawatching and irony could eventually lead to the ruin of communications.

In the internet culture, people pass around memes. We pass around memes as a media of communication on social media. It did not take long until we found that we could become satirical with the means. When the memes become more ironic and self-aware, the communications of it seem to slowly slipping away as Wallace pointed out towards ironic tv shows. The narrative of a meme can be in reverse of what it was portraying for the sake of being IRONIC about the opposite position. (For example: portraying vegans not being humans…It could be vegans making fun of traditional bigotry, or the other way around) Can you really tell the position of a meme once you realised that? What is the point of joking if you cannot tell where does a meme come from, who created it, and what is it talking about? Ludwig Wittgenstein once said serious matter can only be talked about through jokes. is it true though?

#YouAreWhatYouMeme #YOLO

The David Foster Wallace Reader,' a Compilation - The New York Times

…And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All irony is a variation on a sort of existential poker-face. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit “I don’t really mean what I say.” So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: “How very banal to ask what I mean.

Wallace, David Foster, E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction , Review of Contemporary Fiction