Sharing memes is a love language
Most people are sorted into categories – friends, family, colleagues, and that special list of people for the day murder is declared legal. But one category transcends these lines. Neither friends, nor family – these acquaintances are the unsung heroes of your sanity. A laugh on the dreariest of days. These are the folks who share memes with you.
Communication has always been humans’ Achilles heel. We have gone to great lengths to get our feelings across. In my childhood, the advent of New Year would witness the mushrooming of ‘greeting card’ shops. You waded through generic quotes and designs, till you found the perfect one – as if Chitragupta himself studied your life and drafted out a celestial greeting card. People before my generation resorted to ‘pen friends’. You found their name, age, and address in magazines. You silently hoped that they weren’t psychopathic killers and sent them your own address – resulting in a chain of letters kept alive for years. Then there were mixtapes – where you outsourced your feelings to Anu Malik and AR Rahman, their musical chords doing the work of your vocal cords.
But mere words were never enough. Humans have always had the urge to share jokes. The earliest recorded joke (1900 BCE) is a fart joke that was saved for the future of humanity! Crude one-liners and sexist jokes were considered important to document, much before humanity found the utility in penicillin and thin-crust pizzas. But jokes weren’t always easy to pass on. There were ‘chain mails’ – an email with 20-30 jokes. We then moved on to SMS forwards. But a single ‘non-veg’ joke caught on your father’s phone could lead to lashings. Also, phone companies sneakily removed the ‘SMS pack’ on holidays and festivals – so you were essentially paying to make someone smile. After a number of failed attempts, we finally settled on sharing reels with each other.
If I were a psychologist, I’d point out that sharing reels is better than therapy. Therapy, for me, has been a low-budget Disney adventure. I’ve had to kiss a few frogs before I found my dream counselor. Also, the sessions are expensive, and the terminology inaccessible. Whenever the word ‘boundaries’ was mentioned, my mind raced to Rohit Sharma. ‘Gaslighting’ made me anxious, wondering if I’d switched off the stove before leaving home. Sharing reels though? A breeze in the park!
The beauty of meme-sharing is also the clear categorisation that one must adhere to. Work-related reels go to colleagues. Friends and family get U/A rated jokes. Dark jokes go to people you know you’ll be sharing a deluxe villa in Hell with. And then there are people you know will be jailed if the authorities saw their memes. When the first wave of freedom of expression hit us on social media – we were all Ambedkars and Bhagat Singhs. But when people began to get arrested for their opinions, we all dove deep into our Internet burrows. Scampering out only to glimpse the chaos, and share it with our friends.
I have shared memes with people for more than a decade, without ever meeting them in person. I have fallen in love with people simply based on their memes. People who share reels with you are a special kind – uncaught in the traps of friendship or family. They couldn’t care less about your birthday, or anniversary. Their only agenda is to make you laugh. The heroes we don’t deserve, but need. Go to your ‘Messages’, and spot those brave frontline warriors. Thank them.
You know what? Just send them this article as a reel, instead!
(The writer’s views are personal)