Understanding Boys’ Memes
Art from Adventure Time turned into a joking reference to the Columbine High School massacre
By Jonathon Reed
The first time I ever heard Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road was during a Next Gen Men after-school program. I looked over at the group playing music during free time, surprised to hear so many young boys voluntarily singing. Then the beat dropped, and I knew I was missing something.
Encountering memes in NGM Summer Camp has been a similar experience. I know enough about teenage culture to keep up on the surface, but it’s like finding myself in the south of France with only textbook phrases from grade-school French class—I’m literate, not fluent.
NGM Summer Camp is an 8-week virtual space for young adolescent boys to connect with each other, learn new skills and spend time with role models. It’s hosted on an invite-only Discord server.
When some boys started sharing memes that crossed the boundary of what was appropriate, I had to make a choice. The easiest thing to do would have been to ignore it; the second easiest would have been to ban memes entirely. Instead, I apologized for not saying something sooner, and committed to both deleting any future inappropriate memes and sending a message to explain why.
The reason I’m willing to put in the extra effort is because every time a boy crosses a boundary, he has an opportunity to learn—and learning about internet humour can help boys reflect on their own real-life values.
“In order for gross, crude, sexual, or even slapstick humor to be funny to its audience,” wrote Peggy Orenstein in her recent book Boys & Sex, “it has to succeed in two contradictory things: violating morals while seeming harmless and detached from any true reality.”
“Hilarious’ is another way, under pretext of horseplay or group bonding, that boys learn to disregard others’ feelings as well as their own. ‘Hilarious’ offers distance, allowing them to subvert a more compassionate response that could be read as weak, overly sensitive, or otherwise unmasculine.”
This kind of adolescent humour is meant to be transgressive—that’s sort of the point. But often the significance of crossing those boundaries isn’t the joke itself, it’s the habit. So my method of intervening with the boys isn’t so much about watching for specific memes as it is about helping them practice skills and patterns of understanding and acknowledging the humanity behind the jokes.
What I learned is that it doesn’t matter so much whether or not I know the memes themselves (although knowing the origins of ‘cursed’ memes and ‘deep-fried’ memes helps). It matters that I know the boys, and I’m willing to spend the time to help them know each other, know their broader cultures, and know themselves.
Read more: You can get deeper into Peggy Orenstein’s analysis of the meaning of ‘hilarious’ among boys by picking up her book Boys & Sex or reading the full quote on Breaking the Boy Code’s Tumblr page.
ICYMI This Week
In Defense of Our Teachers (The Atlantic)
Coronavirus Pods, Microschools and Tutors: Can Parents Really Solve the Education Crisis On Their Own? (The New York Times)
In Between Race and Masculinity (Modern Manhood)
Written by Next Gen Men Program Manager Jonathon Reed as part of Learnings & Unlearnings, a weekly newsletter reflecting on our experiences working with boys and young men. Subscribe to get Learnings & Unlearnings delivered to your email inbox.