When online humour is just not funny.
When we post publicly online we cannot choose our audience. We can, however, choose our words and consider their impact on whoever reads them both now and in the future.
As our world continues to fall apart with increasing speed, I often wonder how everything we are currently living though will be recorded in history. I wonder if there will be screenshots in historical records of badly written infographics full of misinformation written by ‘user123456’. Who, behind the screen claims to be an expert on every world issue you could possibly name. In recent times I have begun to wonder if we will be proud to show the videos we made, joking about wars, to our children.
Not that it will really be our choice, because we may have deleted it, but someone, somewhere has all that evidence. That evidence of us being so wrapped up in our own privilege that our craving for social media attention came before any sense of empathy or any hint of morals. I wonder if we would walk up to these people facing the worst of what our world has to offer and joke about it. Could we really look into someone’s eyes, point them out and laugh at them. Imagine if all our likes, reposts and shares each represented a person standing and laughing at someone who’s life had been devastated by war. Would you stand and laugh about it then?
I understand that it seems as if we have used humor as a way to cope since the beginning of time. Especially here in Ireland where we like to skirt over topics we find hard to talk about and address them instead through ‘banter’ and ‘slagging’. This is all well and good until you are using humor through online platforms to “cope” with someone else’s struggles.
Where is that line between lighthearted commentary, using humor to cope, and blatantly disrespecting people and the issues facing them? I don’t know, but I do know if I was facing something terrible in my country which had left me feeling isolated and terrified. I don’t think I would be looking to people who while doing nothing to actually help, felt they had the right to joke about what was happening to me. From their safe home on the other side of the screen. Of course in this same situation I might turn and joke to someone sitting beside me facing the same struggle as myself, but that is bonding together through a shared experience, trying to uplift each other with humor. It is not joking about something which will have unimaginable consequences for a distant someone, somewhere else.
I should point out, that while this phenomenon of out of touch humor mostly appears to be happening within younger generations, I don’t think it is necessarily our fault. The fact that this is how we react in a crisis is shocking. But it would be unfair to ignore the fact that years of hard hitting headlines, infographics, social media posts, radio broadcasts and television shows being pushed at us has left us scarily desensitised.
When so much information is at your fingertips and a new disaster is brought up for dissection every day, you can’t remain consistently surprised or shocked. This is what causes the disconnect
When so much information is at your fingertips and a new disaster is brought up for dissection every day, you can’t remain consistently surprised or shocked. This is what causes the disconnect. Shock and the force of shock is a tool used when we want people to care about something. When you take away the ‘ shock’ element of things it all begins to seem far off and more like the dystopian films we grew up with. It starts to feel only right to turn major world conflict into a competition. A competition of who can make the funniest remark on the world’s current atrocities and, in doing so, receive the most social media validation, attention and appreciation. Because perhaps in a time of instability the only reassurance we know is that found through our phones.
In the past people have joked through wars. However, they were not joking in a capacity whereby everyone involved in the situation could hear the joke. Online you have no inkling of how the people receiving your media are feeling. This is where the disconnect begins.
The jokes I make over dinner with my family are different to the ones I would make in front of my class. How tactful we are, the language we use, and the way we speak about world issues, varies depending on who we are speaking to. It should be no different online. When we post publicly online we cannot choose our audience. We can, however, choose our words and consider their impact on whoever reads them both now and in the future.