The Standardization of Ironic Humor

By natural law, trends flow that a single form be defined. The final destination of all to gain momentum is standardisation, and a likeness as to the method of shelf-products. Sold by routine and preset execution, meme and off-hand-joke alike can only become such once internalised and signified as code, then perpetuated not by meaning but signal—that to minds most numerous and perfect in their conformity.

The origin of ironic humour was cynical, a sentiment fewer then most could grasp. Once, it could be used to spite anybody plastered with a corporate grin. 

For it’s exclusivity, the zoomer mass took it and forced upon it a smile, so it could be put on a t-shirt. Grimy internet humour isn’t funny because it’s a fuck you to easy goers, but because it's quirky and random. That way everyone could enjoy it, and the class popular could sneak it into school presentations as a wink back to the crazy kids of Gen Z.

Back around 2016, when abstract and ironic humour was starting to get popular, it seems all the Instagram meme account could do would be to locate some sort of routine of a given trend and roll with it. If not a Jojo reference then jokes usually pertain to some other pre existing piece of media. Instead of aiming for comedic effect, all is defined to set routines, until losing comedic punch through repetition. The original function of the first deep fried meme was to poke fun at ghetto humour in America, with its over-use of Instagram filters and poorly cropped presentation. The emoji 🅱️ pertained to Blood slang, and would be used ironically to mimic the sort of people typing in earnest.

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Deep fried memes gravitated into 🅱️ Emoji memes, then into Joe from family guy saying: “Hey 🅱️eter,” then into a predetermined four panel text format with an ironic punchline. 

From 2016’s rising meme culture arose efficiently, synthetic meme culture: an imitation by mentally sound high-school populars trying to join in on the effects of ultimately spiteful origin; 

...a generic reproduction of what had at the time been an upcoming style of cynical expression, failed to be understood by a more efficiently domineering demographic of both chads and logically accustomed anime fans with their repetitious and format based referential humor. This sterilisation descended back in 16 so years later millennials could talk about how quirky Gen Z humour is, ensuring everyone on the iceberg could join in on the fun. 

By this method of progression, anything which arises from actual sentiment, spiteful or otherwise must be subdued and replaced with signifiers and documented routines to be empirically defined on Know Your Meme as data.

Everything at their touch would just turn into a box to be filled in. This mode’s vacant simplicity makes it efficient, so more often than not ends up ultimately dominating and spreading further. 

Everything must be quick to a point and pulled to a logical conclusion: the logical end to the sort of stylised edgy internet culture they stumbled upon around 2017 is masturbation—the logical end to that is mother figures—the logical end to that is mass—then rapped up in this clean, sleek weeb sheen of people extending a seed their brains were too smooth to understand the spirit of, instead folding instantly to the quickest instincts of trend conventional forms

...ultimately extracting from the same Tumblr art-style used by furries. 

The same positive sheen which less than smiling cultural dissidents have been trying to snub and get away from since the dawn of the internet, and which now dominates sub surface layer edge: a cultural fringe safe for conventionality wherein everything is documented and collectivised in Youtube compilations. 

From meme to historical trend, there is no field you cannot normify. Of their memetic model, everything must be a predetermined and atomised product for the sake of ease and absence of thought. Their products are formal and clean to an empirical interest, or if not interest than logic to whatever professionalism and therefore right is—for once something has been standardized, it can only be further polished to further degrees of shiny professionalism.

It's apt that weebs make memes in a similar fashion which doesn't get the culture it's trying to regenerate, because the same stiff and nerdy nature behind a simplistic sense of humor also reproduces copies of jokes pertaining to pre existing things.

The feeder cannot create, but reproduce in reference to that which has come before, from the equally stiff media they consume; that's why they go on about everything being a Jojo reference; it’s too easy, you don’t even have to think; just copy and paste the menacing text onto a picture of someone who isn’t from an anime. 

If the definition of a normie is someone who cannot think for themselves or harbour internal interest, but in compensation have a pursuit to routine, then it makes sense that such people gravitate towards trends like anime and the rest of its acolytes. The mindset is empirical and more concerned with the ticking of boxes than the actual value a thing may hold; everything must be set up properly and documented within its own frame, into a package or product to be consumed with familiarity. 

Arisen trends based upon internally feel-able interest are flattened and replaced with statically organised products set with generated terms and forms recognisable to the consumer. An inherent energy of interest cannot be sold, but a term or an internalised gimmick can as a signifier like any other physical product, just not for money but further perpetuation. There will be a word or a sentence by well recognised routine.

Such phrases don’t serve as the secondary outputs of intending to describe something of concern or interest; the joke and significance is always the very use of the term itself, and nothing more, a reference to a reference. It seems like a trend is only considered a trend when you can look it up and find for it a brief description on Know Your Meme, or a video by some certified Youtuber addressing its existence. By routine, whatever drama floating around the surface level is relayed to a kid with a nasally voice and 1k subscribers playing Overwatch while sardonically talking about the latest trending lolfest. These are signals, ways of quickly getting information across. An objective normie, no matter how fringe will know if something is fit for discussion as a certified topic if the beacons are out there. What this mentality does is transform the outputs of value into package-able products to be set still in culture, for its inhabitants to extract mild kicks from. The nature of weebs in particular is uniform and predictable because they know only this method of consumption; they have not within them a drive or passion, but before them, objects or signifiers to fulfil the use of, boxes to tick. When someone from across a room delivers the line up to a meme, you finish it like a pre programmed robot. 

To have a hazy "aesthetic" filter is to feel comfortable only with certain set orders and constructs: the wholesome exists and the deviant negates the wholesome, making the self feel cool, that is their safe place. Viewers of an older lens cannot be shocked, but observant of whether or not what lies before them holds useful fabric— 

watching another man fuck a woman, isn’t as much something for some as it is to people with cuckolding fetishes. 

In removing that broad and vague sheen of generalised sin, and once that mode of interest has evaporated, any interest left standing can only be practical. The trick to slipping modern culture is stupidly simple: does the thing represent inherent worth to my interest? Then any fat of a cultural agent can be shaved, leaving whatever value to definable interest remaining. Not long ago a weeb was akin to a brony or a furry, and you could persecute them for their interests. 

Only under a pussified default can you shock people with your loli game about suicide. 

It doesn’t take much to shock a generation of sheltered zoomers, because they've probably never heard of Newgrounds before. 

The type of regular straight edge people who this material is directed against, those on the receiving end of its shock value will with wholesome dismay rear back at edgy memes weaponising sex for comedic effect, but then sheepishly retire to watch porn in private on a regular basis. 

If you’re not a product of a useful culture, then you won’t need to gawk at the very presence of such themes, instead other contexts will be of concern.

The conflict of contemporary culture exists between quality and quantity, or form and mass. Quantity is the capacity to consume for the sake of consuming, via a drive alternate to actual interest; quality is that interest. The bane of synthetic culture, of all weebs and all feeders upon its toys, its enemy is definable value, feelable interest. Mass’s bane, the problem is meaning.