it’s because reality is terrifying and our world’s dying, and our developmental years were spent in a constant state of using increasingly nonsensical humor to cope
It’s called the rise of neo-dadaism and the same thing happened during WWII
well that’s not concerning At All
Max Ernst. The Murdering Airplane, 1920
This is what you get when you have most of an entire generation that goes off to a war of attrition and drowns in the mud of the trenches or is chewed to death by rats, among other similarly interesting ways to die. They come home, and it means nothing. Nothing means anything anymore, everything is meaningless, fuck the rules lets get drunk and make art. They had theatrical performances where the actor sat on a single chair on the stage and reacted to the audience. They made money at those shows by selling things to throw at the stage, because why the fuck not? They created art that reflected both their emptiness, and in a sideways sort of way, a sort of hope.
A century later and nothing has really changed aside from the technology of the medium. And I’m certain that most of these artists would have loved smartphones and memes.
Max Ernst painted pictures using fish (not of fish – using fish to paint) and the entire Week of Kindness was basically pre-computer photoshopping. He would have loved all this shit.
do older generations not get fatalistic humor?? like the other day my friend’s parents were hanging around and we were joking and i was like “well no matter what i can always fling myself off the nearest cliff” and they didn’t laugh then later the mom pulled me aside and was like “maybe you should get some help, sweetie” like stfu?? help? in this economy? i don’t think so, debra
I honestly don’t think they get it as a coping mechanism, they think it’s a cry for help rather than actually helping.
i’d even say it’s past just coping and is also now a category of Stuff Kids Got Used To When No One Was Looking; not everyone using that humor is even covering up something bigger, we just stopped thinking fatalistic = taboo/unspeakable somewhere along the line, and most parents don’t seem to know why or how ~
My boss opened a door and missed me by inches, he said “whoops, almost killed you there!” My result of “Oh, if only.” Led to an awkward end of shift debrief.
This generation shares the same humor as the goddamn Addams Family and the previous generation is the White Sixties Family™ that lives next door and runs away screaming at the end of the episode