There are obvious downsides to this line of thinking. It’s anti-intellectual, for one. But also, the incessant caricaturing and dumbing down of major life events numbs us to their significance. If a meme pokes fun at someone’s bad behaviour, it gives the bad behaviour a pass. Through our rapid meme-fication and IJBOLing, we obfuscate the evil of th... See more

Speaking with friends my age, usually the ones who were equally unathletic and unpopular and thus inundated with the content of the grotesque, we share a desire to actively re-sensitize ourselves to the tenderness of human experience.