@Lerouge@Sanctus SpookiWell, aside from that being literally the definition of what any given techbro enjoys watching, he explains things pretty simply. He might use more advanced terminology for most people, but he always explains what he means so anyone can understand. If you put ten year old me in front of him and had him record one of his videos, I would totally understand what he was talking about. Plus he just talks about things you wouldn't normally think about, and said things are usually of the "Holy fuck what" variety. It's just fun trivia about complex things massively dumbed down.
This might be traitorous to say... but please explain the obsession people have with memes. I spend a lot of time on Reddit so I am no stranger to then, but recently they have gone from a niche internet thing to a craze around the globe. I just don't understand...
The internet meme, essentially, is recognized in most people's minds as an in-joke. Their general specificity to a single, usually relatable subject makes people that understand the reference-no matter how absurd-think of themselves as a part of this specific group. When, in reality, said group isn't the like five people your brain treats it as but rather millions of people across the world. The more absurd memes (a good example I hope you know about was "long boy", which is also now used as a fruit fly to document the life stages of a meme because it fizzled out in about a week) don't have any specific subject, but are recognized as SIMILAR to other memes with subjects by the brain and thus people that are familiar with memes consider themselves in the in-group of people that like memes. So these memes, which if shown to some random guy who's been living under a rock or just someone above the age of 35, would have zero value in terms of humor. But to those who are familiar with memes and consider themselves a part of the meme in-group, they become in-jokes and thus funny.
One can also draw connections to absurdism in art after both world wars, which arose (of course) out of the fact that both wars caused massive devastation and were probably barely imaginable by the people at the time. Plenty of people lost their then-ubiquitous faith in God after living through them-my great grandfather never prayed again after he came back from WWI-and as a result the world seemed wrong to them. So absurdity became common in art, things like "sound poems" where people just spewed out gibberish in overly geometrical costumes and other strange works started to be created. In, I assume, both an attempt to make sense of the world or demonstrate its meaninglessness and absurdity
I would argue that the absurd, "ironic" memes have grown out of a similar feeling. Most of the millennial generation has been born into a world where they will die with debt, never retire, and have to pay for clean air (hell, already a thing in China). An economic crash has only made things worse for this entire generation, and so there's a fairly similar feeling of living in an absurd or hostile world. I mean, the South Korean president was indoctrinated into a millionaire cult that controlled all her actions behind the scenes, which was LITERALLY A CONSPIRACY THEORY before she recently admitted it was true. That's ridiculous, that's too stupid to be the plot of a movie, and it's reality. I personally enjoy absurd memes with no meaning because I see the world as ridiculous. I'm going to suffocate to death after missing my uncontaminated air subscription, leaving behind thousands in debt for children I won't have because I have failed to ever have a romantic relationship despite being well past the "normal age" to do so. If I believed the world had meaning, I would have killed myself a long time ago.
Coincidentally, this is also why a lot of people don't get absurd memes. They aren't in that situation. They have enough wealth to not need to worry about anything, or they know they'll be dead well before their world gets a chance to become a polluted hell. Maybe they just believe everything is fine, or maybe they have a vibrant social life connected with upper-middle class wealth so they don't even think about what's coming for them or the people below them. This helps people figure out who "gets" memes and who doesn't, and by extension what types they get. I have a friend who's the daughter of a rich businessman, and she laughs at things like the old John Cena memes (which are a third type: ones that create references on their own through sheer repetition when they were absurd, thus gaining a following in people that don't get absurd memes. A process often called "noramlization" or "normiefication") and Shia's "JUST DO IT" speech. But she wouldn't ever get, say, a ghetto meme (which are fucking comedy gold if you ask me), or literally anything from Special Meme Fresh or the countless other even more ironic Facebook meme pages. I, on the other hand, started to learn about politics the same time both my parents got fired in 2008. So my worldview is basically "Everything is shit and the universe is meaningless", and with that I ended up starting to "get" absurdist memes. Had the Recession not happened, I'd probably still be posting the old advice animal memes or laughing at rage comics.
So basically what I'm saying is that whether or not you enjoy memes largely depends on your societal status and material conditions. If you want to learn more, google "The Philosopher's Meme". A good example of what I mean about the absurdism arising from a view of the universe as meaningless due to one's environment is Non-Existent Existentialist Memes.
