the sociology and senselessness of twenty-sixteen

Edit:  I have many worldwide readers, however, this particular post mainly pertains to American cultures and subcultures.  I'm a huge lover of globalization and will post plenty on that, promise.  However, to recap an entire year for a country that I've never seen first hand is a bit difficult.  53% of my blog readers are American, but I love my 47% equally!

  2016 has been quite the year.  Natural disasters to major celebrity deaths to hit movies to dumb people to new waves of technology - 2016 shaped us all. 
 
  One common theme for the year has been "2016 ruined us all", but, truthfully, I see this as a diversion of blame.  We mess ourselves up.  If we ruined our year, it was our fault for doing so, and not the years.  Father Time isn't sitting up in a pedestal somewhere laughing at Gen-Z and Millennial running around terrified.  No.  As a culture, we are going through major shifts, and this particular year has shown some ill effects.  In sociology, there are five ways in which a culture can change, and I believe that our Western culture has changed in all five.  Allow me to explain. 

  1.) Discovery

  Essentially, paying attention to something that we never knew existed.  On a menial note, Joe Biden has existed since 1942, yet he did not hit popularity for Gen-Zs and Millennials until this year.

   Yet, on a more serious note, we truly discovered the ills of natural disasters, such as Hurricane Matthew on the East Coast and the wildfires in Virginia/Tennessee/North Carolina.  But that's depressing and serious.  Have some more memes. 

  2.)  Invention

  Oh my, do I even have to elaborate?  We are in a time of technological invention!  Ironically, even though most of us find ourselves constantly surrounded by technology, if we were to be submerged into a past time, we would be of no help because we don't understand how any of it works.  What a strange time that we live in. 

  3.)  Diffusion

  Our clothing styles from overseas, our music, television, and movie culture rapidly adoring the Brits (okay, but seriously, why are so many of our things British?).  Anime and Hentai (gulp) are huge.  We are adopting the ideologies and becoming more global.

  4.)  Acculturation 

  See above.  Can you name more than three members of One Direction?  Yeah, I'm ashamed, too.

  5.)  Assimilation

  Although I believe that we have failed to reach this point, between immigrants and expats, we are approaching this point.

   I wish I could make some drastic ending point to make my English teacher proud, but honestly, I'm just going to conclude this post with some more memes.  Because, you know.  Memes.

 

a kms culture

Edit: posted from mobile, please forgive any formatting errors. 

  Meme: (mē-m) a picture, typically humorous, that encompasses the ideology of that culture. Spread on the internet. 

  KMS: An abbreviation for "kill myself"

"I just lost my wallet kms"

 

  Okay, I love some dank memes. Many nights have been spent crawling the depths of 4chan searching for a thread to make my sides jump in vicarious laughter. After hitting up Tumblr, I end my meme search in the Instagram discovery section, looking for any dankness which may have slipped through the cracks. Quite honestly, I love memes. Pepe, Kermit, you name it, I know it. Memes, man.

A recent meme movement has been the "kms" movement. KMS stands for "Kill My Self". Quite literally, the jokes relate to a wish for death and a loss of hope. Quite honestly, 96.8% of the dark meme posters are not actually suicidal nor would they have a diagnosable mental condition. Yet, the jokes are there. 

  In modern society, a dark day has become synonymous with depression. A fear of public speaking is associated with anxiety. Can't sit still?  Obviously you have ADHD.  It's funny, according to this online community, schizophrenia, personality disorders, and dissociative disorders aren't as rampant, despite a similar level of diagnoses from psychological professionals. Why?  They aren't as popular. No one thinks that being autistic is cute. No one gives you sympathy for having hallucinations, they think that you're crazy.  

  When we covered the topic of eating disorders, my Psychology professor said that EDNOS exists for two reasons - one, for those with an eating disorder that has not yet progressed to a diagnosable state or are fighting, and two, for those who try and 'become anorexic' and lose control. Want to guess which group gains more sympathy?

 

  I got sidetracked.  Okay, back to my point. The frequency of "kms" being used in conjunction with "funny" or "acceptable" is not okay. If a suicidal idealistic individual were to frequently hear this saying, couldn't they get triggered?  

  As someone who has seen the darkest recesses of the mind of humanity, I say, with common decency, stop saying KMS. If you're aren't going to actually kill yourself, stop talking the attention away from those who are. 

  Disclaimer: this post makes me sound like an SJW Tumblrina. As my posts progress, you'll be better able to tell that I'm honestly not. To prove a point, I'm not a feminist.