Wrapping assumptions in memes and jokes

Memes and jokes. Internet stuff.

Memes are defined by their characteristic of spreading through person to person, as in a contagion. Internet memes tend to spread through social media, and often rapidly so. Social media also tends to be rife with misinformation. But surely, these memes, often containing some form of a joke in them, could not possibly intersect with the spreading of misinformation! Or... I wish that was the case.

Sometimes, we do take some memes too seriously. I myself am guilty of that. Sometimes, it is indeed not that deep. Sometimes. Yeah.

Okay, but what about the other times?

Memes and jokes require a certain foundation, assumed context or shared reality to work. Memes about recent events inevitably require affirming or negating certain claims about them. Memes about scientific facts inevitably require an understanding of what constitutes one, and insufficient scientific literacy can easily lead to memes containing jokes where the punchline is only funny if you have certain fundamental misunderstandings about how science works.

Ok. Can we go a bit more concrete?

I'd assume that you are not someone who thinks that the Earth is flat. In which case, you may wish to visit subreddits and other social media channels where flat-earthers cluster, and you might get an idea of what I mean. You might inevitably find some memes there. It's very unlikely that you will not. For someone who believes that the Earth is flat, and has a... creative understanding of gravity (as would be required to maintain internal consistency), it might be funny to joke about how water doesn't just fall "down" from the Earth if it's spherical. I'd assume most people wouldn't find this funny in the intended way -- you probably wouldn't be laughing with someone who'd make such a joke unironically, even if you laughed.

In the flat-earth example, the implicit hypothetical flat-earther assumed a shared understanding of how things are. It assumes that the target of the meme or joke would have a similar "creative" understanding of gravity and relevant physical phenomena, and in some cases entire "creative" epistemologies.

If you outright don't find such a joke funny and commit the absolutely severe blasphemy of expressing it, you might be told (in this case, not even by your typical "edgy" teens) that you shouldn't take it too seriously and that it's "just a joke". You might even be told that you lack a sense of humor. But let's be honest, you probably aren't even taking it too seriously. You are just really responding to the outlandish implicit assumptions that the joke requires you to assume to be funny. Someone who staunchly holds those assumptions may not notice it when pointed out that their joke is only funny to a certain kind of people, and that it's not some universal "own" -- like water to a fish. Their response can be as if they think that you hold the same underlying assumptions as they do, which often tends to be the case if one doesn't examine those enough. And so, not finding it as funny or outright lame can be interpreted as being unable to see the humor within the context and framing of their sets of assumptions, instead of simply a rejection of those assumptions.