by Emily Bellor
Technological innovations in communication have transformed the way people are able to relate to one another: with the rise of the internet and social media, time and space are no longer burdens to fostering connections. But convenience and expansion are not the only changes to come to human communication with the digital revolution–our ways of speaking and the topics we deem acceptable to speak about have evolved as well. A notable example of this evolution is the way in which mental health and illness are discussed in online spaces, particularly in social media. The internet and social media have transformed traditional etiquettes around sharing and communication to allow people to air their personal suffering and turmoil in online spaces: this provides a lens to look at the mental health and wellbeing of social media users. Through analyzing specific groups and images, I hope to be able to discern the causes, etiquette, and crowd dynamics of this phenomenon. These spaces provide a platform for new forms of group therapy and collective catharsis, but also raise questions about the effectiveness of such therapy and the dangers of normalization.
A particularly intriguing format through which mental illness is addressed online is the meme. In her book on internet “trolls” and their behavior, Whitney Philips defines “memes” as: “a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance [that are] circulated, imitated, and transformed via the Internet by many users.”[1] While other theorists have analyzed memes as cultural artifacts,[2] this paper tends to examine the spaces where those memes proliferate and are exchanged–namely, Facebook pages. A popular subject for meme creation (and trolling) is mental illness, most popularly depression and suicide. A google search for “mental illness memes” yields 900,000 results, while a google search of “depression memes” yields 2,730,000 results, and a search for “suicide memes” yields an alarmingly high 13,400,000 results.
The suicide memes archived in Google Images are both racialized and gendered. Many of these memes feature male-coded cartoon characters either committing suicide or having suicidal thoughts, such as one meme of the infamous “Pepe the Frog” hanging himself, or a meme created from a screenshot taken from a SpongeBob SquarePants episode, featuring SpongeBob glaring angrily underneath a caption with reads: “when you swallow 25 pills and still wake up the next morning.” Of the memes that feature images of real people, the people are usually white men. A notable exception, though, are memes which feature images of men coded as Muslim, Middle-Eastern suicide bombers. One such meme features images of two Muslim-coded men talking on the phone, the caption of one image reading “I’m feeling suicidal,” and the caption of the next reading image “Great can you fly a plane?”
The most common meme to be superimposed with suicide-suggestive captions, however, is the “suicide kid”. “Suicide kid is a variation of the meme “Master Trole Kid” or “Cool and Trendy Kid with Sunglasses,” a meme which features text, generally written in Comic Sans font, over a stock photograph titled “Cool and trendy kid with sunglasses isolated over white background.”[3] The “cool and trendy kid” in question is a young, white, boy, who is usually posed in the meme with his arms crossed or flashing double, upside-down peace signs. Captions associated with the “suicide kid” variation of this meme include, “they say 70% of you is H20/well the other 30% of me WANTS2DIE” and “Well that’s all the Christmas decorations up…only one more thing to hang.”
Although, as Philips notes in her book, memes such as these originally gained popularity in corners of the Internet like Reddit and 4chan, they have since made their way to more “mainstream” social media platforms, particularly Facebook. There are multiple Facebook pages dedicated to various categories of memes, including many dedicated to mental illness memes specifically. The most popular of these pages,“Depression memes,” has 533,289 likes as of April 2018. The page posts a number of macabre, darkly humorous memes, ranging from an image of a freshly-dug grave with the caption “Dream Home <3”, to a variation of the newly popular “Roll Safe” meme (an image featuring actor Kayode Ewumi tapping his finger to his head while grinning, taken from the web series Hood Documentary)[4] with the caption, emblazoned over the image in all caps, white, Impact font (a font standard for most memes): “CAN’T DRINNK EMPTY CARBS IF YOU ONLY DRINK BLEACH.” Almost every meme posted garners a mix of “like,” “love,” and “haha” Facebook reactions, and rarely will an image posted by or to the page be met with one of the other three reaction options, “wow,” “sad,” or “angry.”
Despite the “haha” Facebook reaction only debuting in 2016, the concept of meeting suicide and depression with digitally-coded laughter is not a new phenomenon for Internet users, particularly those who identify as trolls. Before there was “haha”, after all, there were “lulz.” Philips defines “lulz” as it relates to trolls, that is, as their end goal: “amusement derived from another person’s anger. Also the only reason to do anything.”[5] Suffering, depression, and particularly suicide and death are an extremely common source of “lulz” for trolls, particularly suffering and suicide mediated through the platform of Facebook. Philips analyzes the proliferation of “RIP trolls:” trolls who inundate Facebook memorial pages (Facebook profiles dedicated to the deceased) with abusive rhetoric and gross images. The behavior of these “RIP trolls,” however perverse or unintentional their methods are, Philips argues, reveals a truth about suffering mediated in spectacle, through their “grotesque pantomime.”[6] In this way, trolling serves as a form of détournement, “the process by which the existing meaning of a particular statement or artifact is turned against itself.”[7] The sharing of depression memes functions in a similar way to trolling. By reversing the very nature of depression by infusing it with humor and “lulz,” these memes serve as a form of détournement, flipping ideas of suffering on their head. This discursive process of memeing as détournement, therefore, is able to function as a form of parrhesia, a term defined by Michel Foucault as “frank speech.”
In a break from their usual meme posting, “Depression memes” posted this status update on March 16: “Just another rminder that the pages goal isnt to make people feel worse. Its a page where everyone who feels like shit is allowed to relate to each other and joke about it without being told to shut up for saying what they feel [sic ].” Though the post mostly gathered the usual like, love, and “haha” reacts, one Facebook user commented, “so many weak and worthless people on here. Nobody cares people. Stop your whining and fix yourselves .” Negative reactions to depression memes such as these reveal the chord of truth struck by these images. In his lectures on parrhesia, Michel Foucault writes, “the fact that a speaker says something dangerous—different from what the majority believes—is a strong indication that he is a parrhesiastes,” one who speaks the truth.[8] The sincerity of frank speech, for Foucault, then, comes from the speech itself being in contrast to the majority opinion: something which these memes do in their frank dealings with suffering, a mode of speech that is generally purged from most discursive spaces and frowned upon by traditional etiquettes.
It should be noted that this sort of speech does not only occur on Facebook in the context of memes and pages, but also in more community and discourse-oriented Facebook groups. One large, notable mental-illness-centered Facebook group is “sounds neurotypical but ok,” a group with 16,489 members that allows neurodivergent (the group limits membership to those who self-identify as such) people to rant about the ways in which they and their illnesses and suffering are framed by neurotypical people. For example, one poster to the group expressed frustration with an article headlined “The Strongest Girls Are the Girls with Anxiety,” remarking that it “…definitely did not make [her] feel ‘strong’.” Another prominent Facebook group of this nature is “little mentally ill things,” a group that is more geared toward commiseration among mentally-ill folks over symptoms, or congratulating each other over good days, rather than discussing those who do not deal with mental illness. The group’s cover photo is a meme with the text: “fun fact: most people join this group for memes/ fun fact: we don’t really have many memes/fun fact: but they stay for the emotional support so it’s cool/that’s how we trap you.”
The conversations that occur in these groups are not allowed in the offline public sphere, as it is forbidden by an etiquette structured around the division of public and private and frontstage and backstage, a concept that Nina Eliasoph analyzes in her book, Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life. In her second chapter, Eliasoph expands on the etiquette of avoidance, in the context of one volunteer group’s refusal to engage with racism in their community: “to talk about racism would have meant changing their political etiquette, to stop trying so hard to keep up that can-do spirit and let some frightening uncertainty in. Actively ignoring such tensions was considered a positive good, a moral act.”[9] Likewise, talking about mental illness is a break with political etiquette in mainstream culture. Eliasoph finds this trope of avoidance to be pervasive in many of the communities she researches, but the mental illness-related Facebook groups and pages do the exact opposite: actively sitting with the “frightening uncertainty” of suffering, even when no solution can be immediately offered. The members of these groups tell their unabashed truths, and support each other in the process of doing so, harkening again to Foucault’s lectures on the Socratic mode of parrhesia, which he defines as a philosophical practice of which the goal is to “convince someone that he must take care of himself and others.”[10]
Because these kinds of care-taking and frank truth-telling are not allowed in the offline public sphere, “the real world,” so to speak, they emerge here, as a property of what George Bataille describes in his book The Accursed Share, the “catastrophic expenditure of excess energy:” “these excesses of life force, which locally block the poorest economies, are in fact the most dangerous factors of ruination. Hence relieving the blockage was always, if only in the darkest region of consciousness, the object of a feverish pursuit.”[11] Though Bataille specifically references war as an example of the phenomenon he is describing, the suffering caused by mental illness also fits into this category of “excess energy,” as it is not given space in the general economy of the public sphere. Instead, it manifests as a luxurious, catastrophic outpouring of memes. Considering this, the crowd dynamic most apt for thinking about these online spaces is the feast crowd, which Elias Canetti describes in his book Crowds and Power:
There is an abundance in a limited space, and everyone near can partake of it. The produce of all kinds of cultivation are exhibited in great heaps…there is more of everything than everyone together can consume and, in order to consume it, more and more people come streaming in…. Many prohibitions and distinctions are waived, and unaccustomed advances are not only permitted but smiled on.[12
Though the feast crowd Canetti describes in his book is one of pleasure, these Facebook pages and groups serve as a feast crowd of the macabre, in which the thing to be consumed is suffering itself, and there is always more than enough of it to go around. The “prohibitions and distinctions” of public sphere etiquette are waived, and unaccustomed frank sharing and truth-telling are welcomed.
I was curious about whether other Facebook users on these pages were reaching similar conclusions. I reached out to a few Facebook friends and posted a call for interviews in “little mentally ill things,” and a few Facebook users volunteered to speak with me about their experience with these Facebook groups, pages, and memes. I asked each person I spoke to whether they personally shared memes dealing with mental illness, and, if so, why: what was the appeal? Most people I spoke with touched on notions of relatability and community. Dark humor, the idea of laughter in the face of suffering, was also a motivator. “They point out what we’re feeling,” noted one person I spoke to named Lia,[13] “whether [it is] thoughts of suicide or intrusive thoughts or anxiety stuff and puts it in a comedic light. And usually [it is] not making fun of the sufferer of the mental illness but instead like shows maybe [you are] not the only one going through it all.” Abigail, another member of “little mentally ill things,” echoed a similar sentiment: “Humor makes me feel better. Even if I don’t feel happy about my life, it’s good to laugh about my illness itself. Also there’s something really comforting about how ‘relatable’ memes can be. Like, seeing other people respond and say that they feel the same way makes me feel less alone.” Others thought that the element of humor and the meme format allowed them to share these thoughts without facing social consequences that they otherwise would. One group member named Diego said it allowed him to avoid what he dubbed “Fake Concern™.” “I feel I can share how I feel without having people asking me what’s wrong…I suppose they take it as just another joke? Since most people do tend to joke about it. Outright posting that I feel like shit probably makes them feel like they should say something,” he elaborated.
Some people claimed to share memes for educational and awareness based purposes. “It’s important to share mental illness memes to normalize it and bring it into people’s every day dialogue,” said another group member, Bailey. “[It] helps with breaking down the stigma around mental illness.” Another member, Emma, agreed. “My favorite memes to share are the kind that try to help others who don’t struggle with mental illness see what it’s like for those of us who do,” they said, and they cited the growing traction that spoon theory (a metaphor some disabled people use to describe how we expend energy and resources throughout our day differently than non-disabled people) has gained in social media spaces as an example of this working. “I think sharing memes helps the neurodivergent people out more because awareness and not feeling alone is incredibly important, but I think they help neurotypical people feel more comfortable asking questions and trying to understand—even if it’s just so they can understand the joke,” Emma continued.
I pressed on the topic of normalization, asking whether they think these memes create a community that encourages seeking help, or whether they think the memes normalize this kind of suffering to a point of near expectedness and inevitability. The responses were mixed. “They’ve made it easier for me to ask for help and understand why some of my coping mechanisms are less than great,” Emma shared, noting that it was actually a meme they saw (and related to) that encouraged them to start talking with friends about healthy ways to deal with their issues. They think the memes help build community. “Everywhere I see good memes,” they continued, “I see people feeling like they finally belong and heaps of love and acceptance.” Abigail agreed that the memes have helped to give her a sense of solidarity, but did express some concern over what would have happened if she had not been diagnosed before discovering “the art of the meme” as she put it:
If I hadn’t been diagnosed when I first saw mental illness memes, I probably would have thought that my symptoms were just normal things everyone my age dealt with. I do get kind of worried about the normalization of it—like, it should be normalized in the sense that it’s okay to talk about mental illness and it’s okay to get help, but not in a way that minimizes the actual struggles of many people.
I asked people why they thought social media in particular seemed to be the chosen platform for this kind of community-building and meme-posting, and interviewees referenced the kind of space and distance that social media lends to interaction. “People tend to act differently online,” said Luke, a Facebook friend who I had occasionally seen share mental illness memes. “There’s that shield between the two people or groups of people…anonymity can come in to play leading to trolls and the like,” he noted, as Philips proved. “I think I feel more comfortable being open and vulnerable online than in real life,” Abigail admitted, “so I’m more likely to discuss my mental illness over the internet than face-to-face.” Emma pointed out that perhaps social media was simply answering a need that had always been there: “people are just able to talk about it openly for the first time,” they said, “I don’t think there’s suddenly more people with mental health issues, I think there’s more space for them to thrive and learn about themselves and others.” Social media provides a space for this kind of public catharsis around mental illness that did not exist previously.
The most intriguing responses came when I asked about the suffering displayed so explicitly—and often crassly—in these memes, and how genuine people thought it really was. “I think it actually understates it,” Lia said, “a meme can’t quite express that hollowed out feeling of depression you get sometimes. Nothing can really quite express that.” Others seemed to agree that the suffering present in the memes was also truly present in the poster. “There’s definitely some hyperbole and a bit more nihilism than I think is healthy in a lot of the memes,” Emma noted, “but I think—from what I’ve seen—it’s mostly people who feel these things who are sharing them. And I think a hell of a lot of people are dealing with mental health issues, whether they are aware of their issues or not.” Abigail also said that she thinks “everyone deals with anxiety or depression on some superficial level,” and pointed out that many of the people sharing these memes appear to be students, “so there’s that general student suffering vibe,” she said.
I asked both Emma and Abigail to expand on where they thought these issues came from, and why they thought this “suffering vibe” existed. Their answers were similar. Emma cited the instability caused by the recent rise in fascism and bigotry—particularly in the United States context, and noted that marginalized communities—including neurodivergent people— “feel those instabilities first, and hardest.” Abigail also discussed the uncertainty plaguing people today, particularly young people, “probably because of the negative stuff going on in the world when we were coming of age.” She believes this is fueling the popularity of dark humor, pessimism, and nihilism that these memes tap into. She also linked this uncertainty to the stress of being a student (the “suffering vibe”): “college is really stressful…and on top of it all many people today can’t really afford college so there’s financial stress as well…it feels like an awful lot of stress to put myself through for an uncertain outcome,” she explained, pointing out that employment post-college is not guaranteed.
The rise of bigotry and economic uncertainty are elements of a status quo crafted and maintained by the bourgeois, enforced through spectacle, as Guy Debord analyzes in his book Society of the Spectacle. He defines spectacle as “not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.”[14] According to Debord, a spectacle relates to the mode of production; it is the permanent presence of the justification of capitalism, and this justification is its ultimate goal. Though Debord wrote Society of the Spectacle before the rise of digital media, social media and memes clearly fit his definition of a spectacle–a relation mediated by images. The corporations that serve as the platform for these social relations—Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instagram—have it in their interest for the spectacle that they produce to justify capitalism, to ensure the survival and propagation of capitalist values so that they might survive. Despite the transgressive and etiquette-disrupting nature of these memes and Facebook groups, how much subversive or revolutionary work can they truly do to dismantle the causes of suffering touched on by Emma and Abigail, when they are so deeply entrenched in the iteration of a spectacle ultimately controlled by the bourgeois maintainers of oppression and the status quo? While it is clear from the interviews I conducted that it has certainly allowed people to find community, and a platform to voice their own truths, whether or not the proliferation of these memes will be successful in attacking the sources of suffering created outside of the spectacle—global capitalism, economic uncertainty, rising debt figures, etc.—remains to be seen. But for now, the page likes on “Depression memes” continue to rise.
***
[1] Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture (Cambridge: MIT press, 2015), 22.
[2] See Memes in a Digital World: Reconciling with a Conceptual Troublemaker by Limor Shifman, “Online Memes, Affinities, and Cultural Production,” and “The Language of Internet Memes” by Patrick Davison.
[3] James Blunt, “Master Trole Kid,” Know Your Meme, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/master-trole-kid.
[4] Don, “Roll Safe,” Know Your Meme, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/roll-safe.
[5] Phillips, This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, 1.
[6] Phillips, 71.
[7] Phillips, 67.
[8] Michel Foucault, “Discourse and Truth: The Problematization of Parrhesia,” (presentation, University of California at Berkeley, CA, October-November 1983), https://foucault.info/parrhesia/.
[9] Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics: How Americans produce apathy in everyday life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 31.
[10] Michel Foucault, “Discourse and Truth: The Problematization of Parrhesia.”
[11] George Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy (New York: Zone Books, 1988), 24.
[12] Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power (New York: Noonday Press, 1984), 62.
[13] Names have been changed.
[14] Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (Detroit: Black & Red, 1983), 4.