Of all the newsworthy events in the world that happened over the last few weeks, none was more ignored and underreported on than that fly that landed on Vice President Mike Pence’s forehead. Did anyone notice that?
In 2016, the internet went wild over Ken Bone at the presidential debate, a man in a red sweater who asked about the candidates’ energy policies. A plethora of memes, Halloween costumes and parody accounts came from the ether surrounding this man.
When it was discovered that Bone has a strange past on Reddit, he was promptly — somewhat justifiably — ridiculed, and later swallowed up by whatever internet abscess consumes the memes we outgrow.
This year, it’s a fly. And given the whole idea that history repeats itself, once we grow tired of memes and tweets on this bug, will we find out the fly is an incel? Is that the last gift 2020 has to offer?
I think it’s easy to be exhausted by our culture, or more specifically, the lack of it. Memes are supposed to be small units of meaning — albeit, easily consumable and repetitive. They are supposed to tell us something funny, painful or true. So why do these fly memes feel so empty?
I don’t mean to rain on everybody having fun over the fly. I’ll admit it was thrilling for a bug to, at least for a moment, degrade a man who is too powerful and untouchable to be degraded by any of us.
But what is funny, meaningful or true about multiple celebrities tweeting that the fly was Pence’s “only Black friend”? What is meaningful about comparing Black people to a fly? What about that “joke” is funny or telling about our culture at large?
Memes are supposed to be processed and cooked. They should go through some sort of oven for cultural artifacts. What I fear about these memetic explosions — from Ken Bone to the fly — is that they lead us to not really process the events at hand.
No real thought was taken when Stephen Colbert implied an insect was Pence’s “Black friend.” No real thought was taken when George Takei tweeted, “In the end, Pence will only say that black flies matter.”
What is the function of culture, if not to process history? What is the point of any of this?
Colbert and Takei’s remarks were racist and dumb. But they got a lot of retweets. And if you ask anyone on the streets, particularly those who are Gen Z, what the most iconic thing to come out of the vice presidential debate was, their answer would be the fly.
Don’t get me wrong, I love our generation’s ability to find humor in most, if not all, things in our everyday lives. I mean, why wouldn’t we? Everyday we’re told we are going to be the generation to fix all the world’s problems. We’re going to be the ones who will have to fix climate change and widespread disparity.
Being alive at this moment in time is gray. There’s not a day that goes by when we’re not reminded of how messed up our world is. It’s no wonder we turn to irony and humor to cheer ourselves up a little.
But our memes and jokes do not have to be meaningless and empty. They can generate meaning as much as they can destroy it.
