Grief, Anonymity, and Memes on Reddit: Digital World as a Cultural Resource for "Work of Death"
The Post
TheBoozehound posted an album of memes to AdviceAnimals about one year ago titled, "So, my mom died this morning, and unfortunately Reddit has me thinking in memes." The post received 74% upvotes out of a total 1,608 votes. Here are the contents of the album, consisting of seven "image macro" memes:
First World Problem
I Guarantee
Maury Lie Detector
The Rent Is Too High
Sorry I Annoyed You with My Friendship
Brace Yourself
Aaand It's Gone
In her article, "And the Greatest of These Is Tradition: The Folklorist's Toolbox in the Twenty-First Century," Lynne S. McNeill explains the place that folklore studies has in the new medium of the Internet [1]. Studying the creation, transmission, and participation in Internet communicaiton and tradition is crucial to understanding our place in modern society and its impact on our lives. Internet communication, for the folklore academic, requires a reworking of the one's understanding of tradition. As memes and other online cultural phenomena rapidly emerge and dissipate, putting one's finger on a digital artifact and defining it as tradition becomes a difficult task. How far back in time must the academic locate a meme in order for it to count as "tradition"? How does one measure the meaning behind a meme's origin?
Focusing on the image macro, or "pictures, typically photographs, that are captioned with humorous, sometimes nonsensical text," McNeill argues that the creation and circulation of memes is an active participation in the development and transmission of a real tradition [2]. It's a way for the user to connect with the past and construct meaning. The Internet marked a new development in folklore, as millions of people wield a new power to produce and transmit original content, rendering the medium a variegated cesspool for forms of communication. McNeill writes, "What if it doesn't really matter if the past is especially meaningful? What if there is simply a universal need to continually link ourselves to any past; even a relatively recent or silly one?" [3]. If this is true, then it's clearly present in TheBloodhound's use the image macro to dispell the anguish s/he experiences at the loss of his/her mother.
TheBoozehound expresses grief through humor, while simultaneously securing his/her place in the community. Adopting and modifying popular image macros to communicate bereavement, posting them to a subreddit dedicated to the image macro, and receiving a relatively welcoming response works to potentially alleviate TheBoozehound's grief. Moreover, AdviceAnimals' large community (4,263,538 subscribers) tends to endorse hostility towards content it deem "sob stories." The fact that it accepts TheBoozehound's post testifies to the inherent power of participating in the tradition of a community.
The Comments
AdviceAnimals upvoted squeeeeenis' comment, "This is the weirdest mixture of sad and clever that I've ever read," to the top of the section, revealing a telling consensus. TheBoozehound's post successfully treads the line between sad and clever, inspiring unease (the "weirdest mixture"), yet rendering it palatable by embedding it in traditional memes.
_MrGrimm_ identifies with TheBoozehound's use of humor in handling "the hard times life can give us." S/he (despite the username, I use the double pronoun, as anonymity precludes identifying a Redditor's gender) insightfully discusses the different ways people "manage/cope with grief." Humor, the two agree, "really is the best therapy."
Unlike OffMyChest, some members of AdviceAnimals perceives humor as an appropriate and effective means for coping with grief and loss. Humor, it appears, allows a safe distance between the bereaved and death, providing a tool with which to navigate the unfathomable termination of life.
Inspired by TheBoozehound's post, user metalocality takes "real life" initiative and calls his mother, commenting, "I haven't talked to her in a while and she was just so happy that I called." He proceeds to express sorrow for TheBoozehound, "I am really sorry for your loss," which seems to be a universal response to grief on Reddit. He continues,"...and it's good you have the wherewithal to get through it with humor." Metalocality makes explicit the value the community attributes to humor, even within a grieving context. Finally, the commenter explains to TheBoozehound, "Just know that from your grief, and how you chose to handle it, you helped make at least one guys relationship with his own mother a little better." Metalocality seeks to alleviate the TheBoozehound's sorrow by
assigning his/her grief utilitarian value and communicating that process to the bereaved. The child comments in the thread follow in typical self-depricating humor and banter indicative of the subreddit.
In adition to the universal "I'm sorry your loss" narrative on the site, the snapshot above captures several comments that relate through the use of anecdotes, another common theme in Reddit's response to grief. Users attempt to console the bereaved by showing that they, too, have experienced the death of a mother. As the image exhibits, these comments typically contain advice or reassurance that the pain will eventually subside.
Again, as LVPCmod's comment suggests, some Redditors perceive expressing grief on the site as a signal that "Somone is desperate for attention." They view it as an inauthentic, frivolous response to the loss of a loved one. What could someone possibly gain, they ask, by using Reddit as an outlet for misery? Skeptical of the griever's intentions, they attribute it to the exploitation of the community for the gain of "Internet points," or Karma.
Nitrofan111 displays sorrow, "Sorry about your loss," but immediately follows with, "but this is so fucking cringy, the evening of your monthers death 'man I could make some good memes about this, thanks for the Karma mom!'" S/he finds TheBoozehound's participation in the tradition distasteful, particularly so soon after the death of his/her mother. Memes, for nitrofan11, are petty, nonsensical, and humorous cultural products. They have no place in the somber space of death.
As is often the case in the downvoted threads, the voice of a supporter, in this instance revenant00, gives hard, textual verification of the more symbolic downvote. S/he comments, "Peace. Some seek comfort online," followed by an image link depicting a human eyeball composed of tiny digital letters, numbers, and symbols. The user beckons nitrofan111 to understand the different ways in which people experience sorrow and "seek comfort."
User i_ejaculate_fire comments, "It makes me very, very sad to see that nowadays there are people people [sic], even in moments of distress, that can only think in fucking memes." Clearly, the humorous, playful tradition of the image macro meme carries no consoling weight for i_ejactulate_fire. S/he expresses disapproval of the "nowadays" online cultural response, perhaps opting for more "real life" demonstrations of grief. This kind of response dismisses the potential work that an anonymous social network provides for many grieving members.
TheBoozehound sheepishly responds, "I hate myself for it, truly I do. Is there some sort of medication I can take to rid
me of this terrible affliction?" Robbersdog49 chimes in to support TheBoozehound, sarcastically remarking, "Yeah,fuck people for having their own way of dealing with things. Why can't we all be perfect like you?" Indicative of the supportive AdviceAnimals member's response, robbersdog49 continues, "For me [the memes] showed a deep understanding of the situation and a window into OP's pain but also his humour. As a person who uses humour to cope I find these memes touching. Strange, but that's not wrong." The use of the word, "touching," to describe TheBoozehound's post reveals a sentiment shared by the AdviceAnimals community: humor is an effective tool in battling grief.
Engaging in the image macro meme tradition underlying AdviceAnimals, one typically couched in humor, TheBoozehound accessed an immense community of supporters, attracting very few detractors. It is impossible to know his/her intentions in posting - perhaps s/he, indeed, sought solace in the "Internet points" - but the amount of encouragement and comfort that bloomed from within the community gives creedence to the consoling influence of "Internet strangers."
References:
[2] Ibid., 179.
[3] Ibid., 183.
[4] TheBoozehound, “So, My Mom Died This Morning, and Unfortunately Reddit Has Me Thinking in Memes.”