When 'I'm Hurting' Turns Into a Meme: Why Irony and Absurd Humor Can't Heal Real Pain

Late one night last month, a friend I had not spoken with in a long time sent me a single message: “I’ve been acting a bit abstract lately.”

Staring at those words, my first reaction was to laugh—she was playing with internet slang again, using abstract to mean absurd, eccentric, or unhinged. Yet as I waited, no follow-up joke arrived. Suddenly it hit me: she was not being abstract; she was hurting. She simply did not know how to say “I have been doing poorly lately and I am exhausted from holding it together” out loud, so she chose the safest slang word available and used it to keep me on the outside.

Forty-Five Billion Views of Absurdity: Sugar Coating Around Real Pain

Soon after, I realized that phrase was not her private code alone.

Across social platforms this year, the tag for “abstract” humor has surpassed 45 billion views. Young people use awkward bedroom dances, surreal stickers, and illogical captions to pour out an unnamed emotion. Beneath one post, someone wrote: “When I’m not acting abstract I’m actually pretty normal, but being normal is too exhausting—being abstract makes me feel alive.” That single comment received 120,000 likes.

Alongside it, playful ironic self-care slang—turning the phrase “loving yourself” into a brash, joking pun—has gathered over 800 million notes, specifically to dissolve the shame of taking care of oneself. Even “subjectivity” became a buzzword of the year, not because young people suddenly wanted to debate philosophy, but because they were asking: Do I still count as the main character of my own life? Every one of these trends is a sugar coating; wrapped inside is real, unvarnished pain.

The underlying logic is easy to understand. If you say earnestly in a polite setting, “I am really struggling right now,” someone might tell you to stop spreading negative energy. If you say “I’ve gone abstract,” everyone treats it as a joke and the moment lands safely. Vulnerability wrapped inside a meme is much easier for a crowd to catch than raw vulnerability. So one absurd persona after another pops up—deadpan opossums, theatrical “workplace madness” skits—housing real exhaustion inside a ridiculous shell.

Crying Ten Minutes in the Restroom, Then Posting “Hahaha”

I cannot judge that reflex, because I have done the exact same thing.

There was an afternoon when work pressed down on me so hard I could barely breathe. I typed out a honest post on my phone, deleted it, and finally uploaded a meme reading “Going to work feels like walking into my own funeral” with the caption “Hahaha daily life.” The comments filled with laughing replies. Nobody knew that ten minutes earlier, I had locked myself inside an office restroom stall and cried silently for ten minutes. I covered the truth with a joke because I was terrified that speaking plainly would make me look fragile or unprofessional.

Our generation seems to have mastered this craft: hiding what is real inside what is funny. When we are happy, we post a polished nine-photo grid; when we are sad, we type “hahaha,” folding every messy emotion neatly into a sticker. Over time, we even forget how to pronounce the words “I am not okay.” Compared to having our vulnerability seen, we are far more afraid of hearing someone reply: “Is it really that big a deal?”

Masters of Irony Outside the Room, Speechless Inside It

A psychological counselor once wrote a sentence in her clinical notes that stayed with me for a long time:

“The young clients who come to therapy are masters of absurdist humor outside the door; only after sitting down inside do they realize they have almost lost the ability to describe their feelings in ordinary language. ‘I am hurting’ has turned into ‘I am acting abstract.’ Yet absurdity cannot heal pain.”

Those words sting because they are true. Using memes as self-rescue is completely understandable; before you find a safe exit, having a joke that lets you catch your breath is a mercy. The danger is what happens when irony becomes your only language. Will the pain that genuinely needs to be heard stay trapped inside the meme forever, unable to walk out?

I know someone who posts “Want to quit my job but my mortgage says no” every day in our group chat, paired with a hollow-eyed cat sticker that gets thousands of likes elsewhere. Yet when I messaged her privately to ask “Have you been holding up okay lately?”, she replied instantly: “Totally fine! Just being abstract haha.” The meme had become both her armor and her wall.

One Un-Ironic Sentence: Practicing Plain Human Speech

The exit is nowhere else than in the moment you choose to unbuckle that armor for just a second.

Try doing one very small thing this week: pick a person you genuinely trust, send no memes and no stickers, and type one plain, unadorned sentence—“Things haven’t been going smoothly for me lately, and I feel a bit tired.” You do not need to explain why, and you do not need to cushion it with a joke. You will discover that plain human speech carries far more weight than a meme, and is far more likely to bring back a real human answer. Memes are our secret handshake, but beyond the handshake, everyone needs at least one person who can catch a simple “Help me” without a single emoji attached.

I have started practicing this myself. Recently, when my mood sank, instead of posting “I have cracked apart lol,” I messaged a close friend honestly: “My mood is really heavy today; could you chat with me for a bit?” Saying it plainly felt awkward for the first five seconds, like admitting weakness. Yet the moment the message went through, that tight knot in my chest genuinely loosened.

Why does that single plain sentence work when a hundred funny stickers fail? Because humor, by its very structure, requires you to step outside yourself and become a spectator laughing at your own predicament. When you turn your exhaustion into a punchline, you split yourself in two: the performer who delivers the joke, and the tired person underneath who still hasn’t been held. Plain speech closes that distance. When you say “I feel tired and sad tonight” without a punchline attached, you allow your inner experience and your outer voice to inhabit the same body again. And more often than not, the friend on the other end of the screen breathes a quiet sigh of relief too—because your honesty just gave them permission to stop performing their own invincibility.

Keep playing with memes whenever you want. Just remember to leave a narrow seam in the costume so the real you—the one who does not feel like dancing or sending absurd stickers today—can occasionally poke your head out and say: I am hurting, and I need to be heard.

That is not being dramatic. That is proof that you are still living authentically.

This essay reflects personal lived observation and emotional reflection. If emotional distress persists, please reach out to a qualified mental health professional.