Some days, I find myself wondering what life would be like without the Internet.
Obviously I wouldn't have the opportunity to do what I'm doing right now, and that would be a real shame… but there are other aspects of life where I feel it would actually be quite positive.
One such area is that of humour and comedy. The Internet can, at times, be a hilarious place — but the side effect of how quickly Internet humour (particularly in the form of memes) moves is that by the time more… for want of a better word, "normal" people come across a particularly entertaining joke or meme, it's already "old news" to those of us who primarily socialise online.
When I hear someone in reality quoting an Internet meme or referencing a joke I'd already got sick of seeing repeatedly retweeted on Twitter six weeks ago, it's hard to suppress a sort of "cringe" reflex, when in some cases this is actually a rather unreasonable response. Of course, in other cases — particularly when it's a "Brand" trying to make awkward use of a joke which heavily relied on context — that cringe factor is justified. But very often one might find that an individual not saturated in daily social media — a family member who only follows people online that they already know "in real life", for example — has no idea that the hilarious joke they saw on their Facebook feed that morning had already been well and truly through the online digestive system that is the 4chan > Reddit > Twitter > Facebook > email chains from your auntie cycle.
It's hard to suppress that cringe reflex at times. But I feel like in some cases life might be more pleasant and amusing if I did. Some of these jokes remain funny even long after their original time of telling, after all — and why should I not be able to mutually enjoy something entertaining with another person? I mean, come on, if I can still find farts hilarious after 37 years on this Earth, I can probably find it in me to laugh when my work colleagues recite a joke from the Internet out loud, right?
Much funny. So laugh. Wow. (Sorry.)
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