Dark humor has existed for decades, jokes can date back to the early 1900s with the term black comedy beings coined in 1935.
Over the years this type of humor has gotten more and more possible with the younger generations often using it on social media.
And these posts become quite popular.
In 2018 there were jokes about eating tide pods, recently there have been jokes about World war 3 and now the Coronavirus.
The hashtag “Boomer Remover” was trending earlier this week.
The morbid hashtag meant to pick fun at the older generation during this pandemic has received a lot of backlash after being created on reddit, and yet so many people are still using it.
“I understand it’s not an appropriate joke but I believe [it’s] a funny spin on something that would be relatively concerning for that population, I think it’s a funny turn of phrase. I don’t wish death on the baby boomer population; I’d like to make that abundantly clear.” Explained Carys McCann, a student at Laurie.
Mccann is one of thousands of social media users who joke about these types of dark topics,
“It’s a common way to express your angst about a situation,” She explained.
So, what causes the younger generation to be so open about jokes like this?
There are different factors that are believed to contribute to this type of humor.
Two of the most common beliefs are that our mental health may play a role and the other is that we have become desensitized to these types of violent topics.
Mccan believes jokes about suicide and other dark topics may highlight underlying issues,
“if an individual has something going on. I think it’s become so normalized that its more palatable then if someone was to make an actual statement saying they were going to kill themselves.”
Psychologist Nicole Cormier says the younger generations are a lot more open about their mental health,
“At least in my observation, millennial’s and Gen Z folks are a lot more open about their mental health… I think there’s less stigma and less shaming in millennial’s and Gen Z they are more psychologically minded.”
Another belief is that the jokes may be cause by desensitization. Younger generations are exposed to a lot more violence in their day to day life’s then other. Video games and television often portray violent imagery.
“The joking about it is because the seriousness of it is just not there for them. “Life coach Jennifer Slay shared.
“My parents’ generation wouldn’t even see it on TV because they didn’t have TV’s a lot. So, I think with every generation it’s less serious, it doesn’t mean as much. It’s more of a joke,” She added.
These Jokes can be seen as incredibly offensive to some and yet they are becoming more and more popular on social media.
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