Written by Isaac Villegas, Staff Writer
There is a fine line between coping with humor and simply being insensitive to real life problems, and it is important to know the difference and the harmful effect it can have on people.
On February 28, 2026, president Donald Trump announced the United States and Israel’s launching of air strikes against Iran. Within the next day, thousands of online users (predominantly Americans) expressed their fear of retaliation or worse: the beginning of a world war. However, many of these fears came in the unique form of very questionable memes, most notably in TikTok comment sections. While such harrowing news could definitely come as a huge scare to many people and cause them to react strangely, it is still important to understand how much more harmful acting insensitive towards the subject can be to our whole society.
We are currently living in an era where many serious issues and real life situations have become nothing more than a laughing stock to the Internet for a day. Whether it be through the normalization of suicide jokes and other mental health issues or creating ‘relatable’ and comedic videos about global disasters, online users never fail to take something serious that usually doesn’t even directly concern them and use it for the punchline of their joke. It is already bad enough that this form of ‘dark humor’ is becoming heavily popularized, but it is worsened by the fact it is being heavily targeted towards young audiences that are still developing empathy. If the future generations never fully grasp the importance of caring about things that don’t necessarily affect them and instead become insensitive towards everything around them, there will be major consequences in the way our society works.
A clear example of the drastic effects of desensitization versus coping with humor was apparent earlier this year when the extreme implementations of ICE all over the United States became widespread news. Despite the severity of the situation, a meme originating from TikTok quickly became spotlighted over the actual events occurring; it began when a user commented that they preferred their ice “crushed” in a clever catchphrase against ICE with an edited photo of a glamorous cat in the post. While the message may have been intended to act in support of undocumented people, this attempt immediately backfired as it called into question how seriously people took the livelihoods of others and whether or not one’s activism was authentic. Due to the quick rise and popularization of dark humor, such a horrifying and life-altering event for someone can be used for laughs one day and then entirely forgotten the next or maybe even only remembered as a meme without any of the seriousness behind it.
Despite what was said before, this should not steer someone away from making jokes about their own life or use any sort of humor to cope with their personal problems; sometimes this can be helpful and provide comfort in times of darkness. However, it is still important to recognize that there is a fine line between coping with humor and simply being insensitive around problems that affect others. Just because the majority of society is acting desensitized from everything around them does not mean that you have to behave the same way too.