Falling Down The Rabbit Hole (Absurdist Dadaist Meme Humour)

Millennial Humour can be a baffling monolith for outsiders to understand, and in an attempt to capture the logic behind it, here’s a small introduction to the Absurdist Dadaist Humour that young people have nowadays.
It’s absurd, sometimes it doesn’t make sense, and that’s just the ticket for young people who want a break from the seriousness and potential trauma present in their lives.

Of course I know what it’s about – Millennial Humour is my natural environment – but explaining it to others can be incredibly difficult.

It partially stems from a feeling of hopelessness in a world out of their control, where the only way to find joy in a seemingly senseless world is to make jokes that have even less sense. This can often take the form of warping images and language beyond comprehension, or posting jokes with a long chain of in-joke legacy behind them. It’s a resurgence of the wartime dadaism that our grandparents/great-grandparents might have enjoyed, as themes from the original dadaist movement can be found in modern millennial humour.

An Introduction To Absurdist Humour

This certainly isn’t where it began, but this is definitely a decent introduction. Fast-paced, one-off jokes that are easily illustrated and animated are popular for young people.

Once absurdist humour became the flavour of the day (as opposed to slapstick, traditional stand-up comedy or long-form jokes), memes were created by merging pop culture references together. Sometimes this involved pictures of people and a funny caption, and sometimes this involved merging two classic memories into a new one;

Merging He-Man and ‘Hey, What’s Going On?’ – A Classic Meme

When it became apparent that the basic silliness of merges like He-Man and badly-sung songs were popular, the trend continued with other memes, such as the infamous ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ (Also known as a Rickroll when placed in unexpected places), and the Vitas song.

As the global situation of climate change, authoritarian governments removing basic health and education support from the masses, and the increasing need to seek asylum became more prominent in the media, the jokes became more absurdist – bordering on Dadaism. Dadaist absurdist art in the 21st Century, particularly the type that caters to Millennial humour, often takes the form of ‘Trap Music’, unexpected variations on taken-for-granted norms, and ‘Vaporwave’ music (Vaporwave – slower, lower-fidelity versions of popular songs);