Deep Lore / Part 2
Should I Actually Be Worried?
When “it's just a meme” stops being true, and how to tell the difference
Don't panic. But do read this.
When “Just a Joke” Gets Complicated
Here's where a dad website about funny slang needs to get real for a minute.
Nihilistic irony (the “nothing means anything and that's the joke” posture) is mostly harmless. Kids saying “skibidi” at each other is just kids being kids. But the same cultural posture that makes “skibidi” harmless fun also creates a vulnerability. Because when everything is “just a joke” and meaning is permanently in air quotes, it becomes very easy to smuggle real ideology through the membrane of irony.
Researchers have documented this pattern extensively. The Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET) published research showing how extremist memes function as in-group bonding tools: shared humor that gradually normalizes extreme content through repeated exposure. The mechanism works precisely because of the ironic frame. If you push back, the response is always available: “It's just a meme, bro.”
The concept has a name in research circles: “Schrödinger's Joke”: a statement that exists in a superposition between sincere and ironic until someone calls it out, at which point it collapses into whichever interpretation is more convenient.
The Irony Spectrum
“skibidi”
nonsense
“sigma grindset”
joke or aspiration?
“based”
ambiguous
edgy memes
“jk” caption
actual ideology
as meme
“just a joke, bro” covers all of this territory
Source: GNET / Stoner, Erin. “Schrödinger's Joke,” July 2023. Crawford & Keen, “Memetic Irony and the Promotion of Violence,” CREST / King's College London, 2020. NPR, “How Extremists Weaponize Irony,” April 2021.
When the Joke Stops Being a Joke
There's a term for the endpoint of this process: irony poisoning. It describes what happens when someone is so saturated in ironic content that they can no longer distinguish between what they believe sincerely and what they believe “ironically.”
This doesn't mean your kid watching Skibidi Toilet is on a path to extremism. It obviously doesn't. The vast majority of nihilistic humor is exactly what it appears to be: kids being weird and funny in ways that confuse their parents, which is a tradition as old as language itself. Plato complained about it.
But it does mean that the environment your kid navigates, where sincerity and irony are permanently blurred, where “it's just a joke” covers everything from actual jokes to actual ideology, requires a different kind of media literacy than the one you grew up with.
Your generation needed to learn: “Is this information true or false?”
Your kid's generation needs to learn: “Is this person sincere or ironic, and does even that person know the answer?”
Source: Wikipedia, “Irony poisoning.” Holt, Jared, quoted in NPR, April 2021.
So How Does This Change the Map?
The Two Rivers model still works for most slang. Terms that originate in AAVE or 4chan, carry meaning, and spread through the algorithm still follow the 10-stage lifecycle (next section). But the nihilistic, meaningless stuff (the skibidis and the 6 7s and the Italian brainrot) follows a different path:
The Classic Path: Meaning → Algorithm → Wider adoption → Meaning dilutes → Death
The Void Path: No meaning → Algorithm → Viral spread → Then one of three outcomes:
- A: Stays meaningless. Fades quickly. Most void terms end up here.
- B: Acquires meaning through use. “Skibidi” started as nonsense and now functions as an actual adjective.
- C: Gets backfilled with ideology. A meaningless meme format gets adopted by communities that pour meaning into the empty vessel. Rarest but most concerning.
Path Sorter
Which path did each term take? Assign each one, then check your answers.
OK but What Do I Actually Do With This?
I promised I wouldn't be preachy, and I'm going to keep that promise. Here's the short version:
Most of the meaningless stuff is fine. Your kid saying “skibidi” is the 2025 equivalent of your generation saying “NOT!” after every sentence in 1992, or “wasssssup” in 2000, or “that's what she said” in 2008. It's annoying. It's meaningless. It's developmentally normal.
The environment is different, though. The nihilistic irony that makes “skibidi” harmless is the same cultural posture that makes ideological camouflage possible. Your kid is probably fine. But they're navigating a space that is genuinely harder to read than anything you grew up with.
The useful question isn't “what does that word mean?” It's “what communities is my kid part of, and what's the vibe?” A kid who says “sigma” as a punchline with friends at lunch is in a very different place than a kid who says “sigma” while watching Andrew Tate compilations alone in their room. Same word. Completely different context.
And the single best defense against irony poisoning? A relationship where your kid can talk to you about what they're seeing online without you freaking out. The research consistently points to the same thing: the antidote to the irony spiral isn't more monitoring or filtering. It's having a person in your life who models sincere engagement with the world. Someone who takes things seriously without being humorless, who can laugh at absurdity without drowning in it.
You know. A parent.
(Even one who needs a slang dictionary. Especially one who needs a slang dictionary. The fact that you're here means you're paying attention, and paying attention is the whole game.)
Sources
- ASIS International. “How Memes and Internet Irony Are Hijacked for Radicalization.” May 2021.
- Crawford, Blyth, and Florence Keen. “Memetic Irony and the Promotion of Violence within Chan Cultures.” CREST / King's College London, 2020.
- Dreisbach, Tom. “How Extremists Weaponize Irony to Spread Hate.” NPR, April 2021.
- EU Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN). “It's Not Funny Anymore.” 2021.
- GNET / Stoner, Erin. “Schrödinger's Joke: The Weaponisation of Irony and Humour in the Alt-Right.” July 2023.
- Holt, Jared. Quoted in NPR, April 2021.
- Wikipedia. “Irony poisoning.”