The writer Lindy West once wrote that: “Irreverence has its place, but some things do deserve reverence. That sort of untethered omnidirectional irreverence is not particularly helpful when you’re trying to salvage a wildly unjust, oppressive, and unequal society.”

As the world started to shut down in the wake of COVID-19, I escaped into meme culture. This seems to be a normal defense mechanism for my generation. When the world rears its ugly head, as it seems to be doing more and more as I’ve grown older, I find myself assuaging my fears and paranoia with irreverent memes and TikToks.

This irreverence, though, started to haunt me, and West’s quote filtered back into my consciousness. Some TikTok influencers showed their irreverence for the pandemic by posting “challenges” such as licking a toilet. This influencer was later hospitalized for contracting coronavirus.

The “wildly unjust, oppressive, and unequal society” of West’s quote came further into focus throughout the pandemic. We are in a moment in which we can view the bare bones of our unequal society.

The rich and the famous get medical treatment and testing for COVID-19 while many suffer at home or in hospitals unable to receive either. The pandemic has significantly affected communities of color far more than others. People wait on stimulus checks, which will most likely go to rent and barely cover the rest of necessities. Most college students, a fairly financially vulnerable population, will not receive a check.

All of these are frustrating. It is my hope that this experience will help strengthen our resolve as a society and people to confront these inequalities head on after we get through this. But can we?

I fear that we are so irreverent sometimes that we won’t have the ability, as a generation, to come together and assemble against these systemic problems.

That assemblage is to be seen, but we are well aware of society’s problems. Our irreverent humor is one way how we bring awareness. One of my favorite tweets, for example, states: “For the average American the best way to tell if you have COVID-19 is to cough in a rich person’s face and wait for their test results.”

That tweet shows the heart of our irreverent humor: it’s funny because it’s true. Our generation’s humor contains irreverence and cynicism due to the world we inherited. We live in a world of a reality TV President, school shootings, rapid ecological collapse, systemic racism and, now, full-scale pandemics. We learned our irreverence from the world and the politicians who have muddled the line between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy. We instead have chosen an outlet to transform this irreverence through humor and through the tweet, TikTok and memes.

Our humor is irreverent and contains cynicism. We live in a world in which we must laugh at things; otherwise, we will surely cry.

True Dabill can be reached by comment section trolls and cowards at dabi7280@stthomas.edu.