The Meme of the Decade
Gamer Joker.
Ironically, only small fraction of "memes" described by Know Your Meme and similar databases are actually worthy to be called memes. Mostly, more appropriate term would be something like: reaction / macro image, joke, clever memorable punchline, roast, copypasta, ect.
Simple humorous building bricks that get repeated over and over until everyone is bored of them, then they quickly get buried under the pile of dust only to be replaced by something else equally simple.
Few that are lucky can later be revived within ironic context, or out of nostalgia, but that's it. They never switch meaning, they never evolve following hivemind conjuncture, they can never culturally become something else, without formally becoming something entirely different.
Among countless cultural phenomenas of the decade, the Gamer Joker stands out due to being almost entirely pure abstraction. The Gamer Joker of 2020 has absolutely nothing technically in common with Gamer Joker of 2014, for instance. The former would be most likely contained within the repeatable silly catchphrase like "we live in a society", or some racist dog whistle presented in a mocking manner.
The latter would look like an actual intentionally low-quality, probably deep fried image of Joker with overreacting edgy text with poor grammar on top of it.
Yet it's all the same meme.
The history of it is so weird it's somewhat even hard to follow.
First, it was used by Gang Weed facebook community to make fun of preposterous teenage anger, to demonstrate absurdity of claims that can look reasonable in underdeveloped mindset of a youngster, but are universally cringeworthy for any adult, all in intentionally grotesque form.
Based on that randomness, with the help of imageboards, and even fairly large userbase of confused people who did not get the irony, somehow the entire lore of the Gamer Joker character and his surroundings was developed.
According to it, Joker, the main protagonist, the one the reader is encouraged to associate themself with, is a gamer opressed by society he lives in. The main source of oppression comes from his crush Veronica not wanting to commit sexual intercourse with Joker and chosing attractive Chad instead.
Chad on the other hand, is mainly interested in popular firl Stacy (sometimes portrayed as his girlfriend, sometimes as just symbolic name for any attractive and popular girl in school / college environment).
Joker for sure is aware that Chad is not serious about relationships with Veronica, is mad about it, and it makes him question sanity of entire society he lives in.
The Gamer becomes racist
Due to circumstances described above, Joker sees himself as part of the group opressed by society. Yet he is not met with understanding and protection, such as other opressed groups, namely: women, black people, lgbtq+ people, refugees. Instead, he is accused of misoginy and even denied his right to say the N-word whenever he wants.
This is where the war on society begins.
From now on, the mission of Joker is to let the world aware of his hatred towards minorities, and spread the racist message in a way just subtle enough, to not be blatantly laughed at.
I don't know where this meme is heading to, but it is for sure evolving, and will remain a rotating laughing stock for various human blemishes for a long time from now on.
The most beautiful thing about this meme is its versatility.
The meme by its nature is self-aware. If you experience some impulsive hatred towards abstract "society" yourself, which is, not gonna pretend it's not, a fairly natural thing, you can completely describe how you feel to someone else with a certain degree of meme knowledge with just one phrase. We live in a society.
Not only that, I even calmed myself down a few times this way.
We live in a society. It be like that sometimes. Not everything always gonna be the way you want it to be. Because you know, society. You can wallow in self-pity for some time, but eventually, it passes, and you will need to put up with at least some things you don't like anyway, somehow. Possibly even figure out it's not as bad as you imagined later. Society.
Grab your avocado toast, listen to Linkin Park for a few hours, feel better, and be aware of your own silliness. Better to be, than not to be.
Society.
Bottom text.