If you were to show a teenager in the 1990s a popular meme from 2024—perhaps an image of a deep-fried, heavily distorted cat staring blankly at a slice of bread with the caption "B O I N G"—they would likely be entirely bewildered. They wouldn't understand the joke, the context, or why millions of people found it hilarious.
The comedic landscape has experienced a seismic shift over the past decade. While traditional formats like setups and punchlines, observational observations, and slapstick remain, the dominant comedic language of Generation Z (those born roughly between 1997 and 2012) is fundamentally different. It is characterized by deep irony, Dadaist absurdity, and surreal visual distortion. But what caused this generational shift toward the bizarre?
The internet as a Hall of Mirrors
To understand Gen Z humor, you must understand the environment in which they were raised. Unlike previous generations who were introduced to the internet as teenagers or adults, Gen Z are the first true "digital natives." They grew up immersed in the hyper-connected, fast-paced, and often chaotic world of social media.
The internet is an environment of endless context collapse. An image or a joke can be shared, remixed, stripped of its original meaning, and recontextualized millions of times across different platforms in a matter of days. This rapid cycle of iteration essentially breaks traditional comedic structures. Once a format is established, it is immediately recognized and therefore boring. To elicit a reaction, the meme must become more abstracted, more distorted, and more absurd.
- Deep-Frying: A common visual technique in Gen Z humor is "deep-frying" an image—running it through numerous filters, increasing the contrast and saturation until it becomes a pixelated, overblown mess. This visual degradation mirrors the semantic degradation of the joke itself. The humor comes from the sheer exhaustion of the format.
- Surreal Juxtaposition: Taking two entirely unrelated concepts and mashing them together without explanation. The lack of context is the joke.
Dadaism for the Digital Age
The rise of absurdist Gen Z humor bears a striking resemblance to Dadaism, the avant-garde art movement that emerged in Europe during World War I. Dadaists rejected logic, reason, and traditional aesthetics, embracing nonsense, irrationality, and chaos in their art.
In many ways, the internet is facing its own Dadaist moment. Just as the horrors of WWI led artists to conclude that a world capable of such destruction was inherently meaningless, the constant barrage of global crises faced by Gen Z—climate change, economic instability, political polarization, and a global pandemic—has fostered a deep sense of nihilism.
When the real world feels increasingly absurd and unpredictable, traditional, structured jokes can feel inadequate or intellectually dishonest. Absurdist humor provides a coping mechanism. It is a way of saying, "The world makes no sense, so why should our jokes?"
The Rejection of Sincerity and the Layers of Irony
Gen Z humor is notoriously layered with irony. It is often impossible to tell if a statement is meant sincerely, sarcastically, or ironically.
This deep irony is partly a defense mechanism. In an era where anything posted online can be used against you, sincerity implies vulnerability. Masking true feelings behind layers of surreal irony allows for expression without the risk of earnest commitment.
- Post-Irony and Meta-Irony: The layers have become so thick that a new category has emerged. "Post-irony" is returning to a state of sincerity, but communicating it through an ironic medium. "Meta-irony" is when it is unclear even to the speaker whether they are being ironic or sincere.
An example is the adoption of "cringe" aesthetics. Gen Z will often deliberately create or share content that is poorly edited, awkward, or unfunny (like early 2000s graphics or awkward corporate TikToks) because the failure to be funny is itself the source of amusement.
The Algorithmic Influence
The platforms themselves also dictate the humor. TikTok, the dominant platform for Gen Z, utilizes a highly tuned "For You" algorithm that rewards quick, visually engaging, and highly replicable content.
Surreal, non-sequitur audio clips (an unexpected sound effect, a distorted voice, a snippet of a bizarre song) can go viral precisely because they don't require an English-language setup or a cultural punchline. They are purely sonic, absurd reactions that can be matched to any visual context. The algorithm demands novelty, and absurdity provides an endless supply of novel (if nonsensical) combinations.
Conclusion: The New Mainstream
While it may seem impenetrable to older generations, Gen Z's absurdist humor is not just internet noise; it is a sophisticated, highly evolved comedic language that perfectly reflects the anxieties and the digital environment of its creators.
As this generation matures and enters the cultural mainstream (writing television shows, creating movies, and defining mainstream comedy), we can expect this surreal, deep-fried sensibility to move from the chaotic feeds of TikTok into the broader cultural consciousness. The future of comedy isn't a setup and a punchline; it's a distorted picture of a frog with a glowing red eye, and we shouldn't be laughing, but we are.