2B —Thursday, September 13, 2018
b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Call it fake, call it Neo-Dadaism:
Absurdist internet humor is art
The
most
common
explanation among people who
critically engage with absurdist
internet humor is to claim a
resurgence of Neo-Dadaism.
A
quick
Google
search
of
the two pulls up an endless
list of cultural think pieces
that position the two artistic
movements as parallels. The
primary aim seems to be, more
than artistic analysis, some
proof of the validity of this
specific movement.
“For an art historian, Neo-
Dada is a very specific term for
a few artists in the ’60s,” Art
History lecturer Tara Ward said
in an interview with The Daily.
“People like (Jasper) Johns who
were playing around, not only
with popular culture, but using
some irony.”
Johns, who’s also claimed
by abstract expressionism and
pop art, is best known for his
depictions and recreations of
the American flag.
“The
great
story
about
Johns is he produces a series
of bronze beer cans that are a
response to his dealer saying
that this dealer could sell some
beer cans that de Kooning had
thrown away,” Ward said. “So
Johns kind of goes, ‘Here sell
them.’ And of course they did
and made a fortune.”
“But this is all going back to
earlier movements in the 20th
century like True Dada, which
goes in a variety of different
directions,
but
was
always
aimed
at
being
somewhat
controversial,
sometimes
in
very political ways,” Ward said.
“And then there are people like
Duchamp and Picabia who are
posing interesting questions,
but within an almost juvenile
sense of humor.”
A movement of avant-garde
art in the early 20th century,
Dadaism and its precursors of
anti-art sought to challenge
what was considered art.
“The thing that I was looking
at this morning that would
recall these words to me … the
whole Kanye/PornHub thing
that
just
happened,
where
he’s the creative director of
their
awards,”
Ward
said.
“The question is: Is that a
joke? Are we supposed to take
that seriously or is that just so
ridiculous that we’re supposed
to react to it?”
Reaction is essential to, and
the chief aim of, most Dadaist
art.
A mere 28 years into the life
of the Internet, it has become
a society that has reached a
self-reflexive stage. Absurdist
internet humor, like absurdist
humor and art of the early 20th
century, rejects aesthetics of
capitalism, logic and reason in
order to pronounce the futile
nature of existence. Only now
the “world” that is dark and
unrelenting isn’t necessarily
the physical world at all. It’s the
world of the internet.
The creation of the internet,
in a sense, was the creation
of a new world — a world that
is moving through the same
artistic
movements
as
the
physical world. Only the online
world is privileged with the
knowledge
of
the
physical
world. Even when its humor
is self-referential, its modes
of reference are learned from
outside itself.
And absurdist internet humor
is critiquing and parodying the
society of the internet, even
more than it is the physical
world.
Faux
profundity
is
blown apart by
memes like “we
live in a society”
and “fellas is it
gay” that make
a
joke
of
the
homophobic
rhetoric
and
toxic masculinity
that fills forums
on
4chan
and
Reddit.
“Think about
Rauschenberg
taking
essentially
trash,
but
also
pointedly
historically
meaningful
trash.
There
is
this
latent
meaning
that
then
they’re
remaking
and
sort of activating,
but sort of not,”
Ward
said.
“Which is, again,
this really weird
space of, ‘Okay,
are you actually
saying this? Or
are you negating
this? Where are we here?’”
This constant regeneration
is essential to this kind of
humor. Memes are better when
they reference other memes.
Jokes are smarter when they
reference other jokes.
“In my interaction with it, I
guess I would define absurdist
humor as the logical extension
of
an
ironic/Postmodern
conceptualization of culture,”
Derek Triebwasser, an LSA
and Music, Theatre & Dance
junior, said. “My sense of this
humor is that we, as content
creators and consumers, are
perceptually
aware
of
the
degree of abstraction of a meme
… despite potentially being
unable to voice this.”
Triebwasser interacts with
absurdist
internet
culture
primarily through Twitter and
prides themself on their ability
to curate content. Like many
others in this corner of the
internet, Triebwasser isn’t a
content generator, but interacts
with
the
community
as
a
collector — the kind of collector
that, Ward noted,
existed
before
the internet.
“I’m not really
a
big
fan
of
super, super dark
humor, which I
think makes up
a lot of internet
culture
these
days,” LSA junior
Grace Toll said.
Another
content collector,
Toll finds herself
drawn
to
the
lighter
sides
of
absurdist
internet culture,
favoring
Wholesome
Memes and what
she calls “goofy”
humor over the
darker,
more
cynical sides of
the internet.
“My
favorite
meme
right
now
is
the
‘Do
y’all
here
sumn’
meme,”
Toll
said.
“So
it’s the picture
of
Squidward,
and you use it if
someone says something you’re
choosing to ignore.”
“And all the sub-memes of
it, like the one with the fish
that’s ‘Girl, I hear sumn,’” she
continued, noting how memes
tend to communicate with one
another.
Even in more benign forms,
these memes are still operating
under the same principles of
absurdism
and
regeneration
that Ward mentioned. They
pull images, like SpongeBob
and
Squidward,
who
are
recognizable even to users who
haven’t seen the show, from the
pop culture canon and apply
text that makes them more
absurd.
We see this happening with
cartoon characters precisely
because they carry a certain
degree of absurdity within the
context of their show. Then,
pulled out of context and
paired with text, the absurdity
is amplified.
That’s how many of these
memes operate. Users identify
images with some degree of
essential absurdity — cartoons,
stock photos, stills from reality
TV — and use them to create
something even more absurd.
“Pre-internet, there was a
lot of like, ‘How do I figure out
the unknown musician?’” Ward
said. “So there was this cult
of people collecting X, Y or Z,
going to specific places to learn
about that.”
“And
so
there’s
also
something about these that has
that in it. Can I find the weird
thing? Can I be the first one to
show you the weird thing? Can
I trace where this came from?
Where am I in the hierarchy?
That really just echoes that
person
who
knew
all
the
obscure albums,” Ward said.
When looking for absurdist
content, Triebwasser is most
taken
by
the
simultaneous
abstraction and distillation of
different meme formats.
“The galaxy brain meme
is both more concrete and
abstract than a ‘normal’ (Advice
Animals) style meme as it makes
a direct comparison between an
established cultural scale and
any number of new concepts,”
Triebwasser said.
Advice Animals are — and,
at this point, mostly were —
an early meme format that
employed simple stock images
and impact font to create a
cast of characters. Success Kid,
Advice Dog and Conspiracy
Keanu should be somewhat
familiar to anyone who has
been online in the past decade.
They are simple and easy to
regenerate
formulas,
each
with a specific set of rules.
Like comic superheroes, their
monikers give users all the
necessary information as to
how to interact with them.
But now, in the era of the
Galaxy
Brain
meme,
the
rules are less clear, and the
MADELEINE GAUDIN
Managing Arts Editor
COURTESY OF MADELEINE GAUDIN
characters are less concrete.
“Because we have empty
space, anything can be placed
here, including other memes,
references, conceptualizations,
et cetera,” Triebwasser said.
“This meme, I think, is a
poignant example of the degree
of abstraction as a scale for
humor. As the galaxy brain
expands, its comparisons on
the left become more and more
‘abstract.’”
Triebwasser points to other
popular meme formats — Guy
Looking Back and Grasping
Hands — as examples of this
blank space abstraction. The
“rules” associated with the
Advice Animals are wiped
away and the visual product is
able to move into a space that
is more abstract, and more
absurd.
“I think that the internet
fosters this sort of ideation
due to its accessibility and
impersonality,”
Triebwasser
said. “Just as we abstract
humor, the way of interaction
on the internet is also bounded
by ways of or degrees of
abstraction.”
For Triebwasser, the Twitter
profile is an abstraction of
the Twitter user, and the
platform itself is integral to
its proliferation of this kind
of
humor.
In
that
sense,
the
platform
adheres
more
closely
to
a
Dadaist
rejection
of
authorship than
a
Neo-Dadaist
celebration of it.
“When
you
see
a
really
popular
tweet,
unless
you
already
know
the account you
probably
will
never remember
the
account
that
tweeted
it,” Triebwasser
said.
“I
don’t
know if you’d
even
look
at
their
(Twitter
handle), you just
have the meme
for itself.”
This distance, Ward asserts,
allows the internet to get away
with a darker form of humor
— like the Tide Pod challenge
that dominated Twitter feeds
earlier this year — that is
harder to stomach in real life.
“If, sitting in the dining hall,
I challenge the kid across from
me to drink a gallon of milk …
I have to sit there and watch
the consequences of that kid
vomiting,” Ward said. “But you
don’t if it’s on the internet. So
there’s a distance there that
perhaps allows this to happen
more or at least puts you in a
different relationship to it.”
This distance between the
subject
and
the
consumer
makes it easier to consume this
type of humor. But consumers
with
different
degrees
of
knowledge as to the validity
and origins of the joke are
placed in different positions.
Especially when it comes to
something like Tide Pods.
“That
one
was
very
pointedly, ‘You either know
or you don’t.’ That was about
getting other people to react,”
Ward said. “The news covering
Tide Pods struck me as exactly
what that aimed at doing.”
A Twitter user can tweet a
photo of a bowl of Tide Pods
with the caption “Dinner” and
have it taken two very different
ways by different users.
“Personally I thought it was
funny for a little bit,” Toll said.
“You look at one and you think,
‘That does look good. I do want
to eat that.’ But obviously you
don’t – that was definitely a
meme that was popular with
younger people.”
The divide of knowledge
among internet users and Tide
Pod challengers was also an
age divide. Younger users —
mostly teens — who grew up
with the absurdist language of
this community but had not yet
developed the critical skills to
understand all of its nuances
drove
the
meme
to
more
dangerous levels.
“Part of the pleasure of it
was knowing that other people
didn’t get it. I think where
it gets dark is what are the
consequences of not getting
it,” Ward said. “Maybe it’s just
that you’re old and don’t get it
and maybe it’s
death.”
Even in more
benign
cases,
the
distinction
between
who
gets
the
joke
and who doesn’t
is
constantly
reaffirmed
online
—
most
prevalently
through the label
“local.”
“Locals”
are
Twitter
users
who post sincere
content that can
be seen as the
direct
opposite
of
absurdist
Twitter.
They
reaffirm the very
things Dadaism,
Neo-Dadaism
and
internet
meme
culture
are
critiquing:
traditional
aesthetics
of
beauty, capitalism and faith in
the world as a good and just
place.
“Locals” are usually white,
well-adjusted, suburban teens
who
retweet
memes
three
iterations
behind
absurdist
Twitter. Offline, they might be
called “normies.” And offline,
they
wouldn’t
necessarily
interact with their darker, more
cynical contemporaries in this
way. But online, with enough
retweets, your tweet can end
up on anyone’s timeline. And
next thing you know, your
tweet about eating pizza and
watching “The Office” that
was a hit with your friend is the
butt of some stranger’s joke.
“People
who
didn’t
understand
that
kind
of
humor,” Toll defined when
asked about “locals.” “The
kind of people who would see a
meme that was popular months
ago and say, ‘This is hilarious,
Absurdist
internet humor,
like absurdist
humor and art
of the early 20th
century, rejects
the aesthetics
of capitalism,
logic and reason
in order to
pronounce the
futile nature of
existence
Users identify
images with
some degree of
essential absurdity
— cartoons, stock
photos, stills from
reality TV — and
use them to create
something even
more absurd
COURTESY OF MADELEINE GAUDIN
MARCHEL DUCHAMP / WIKIMEDIA