What started as a joke became something darker

It’s easy to laugh. That’s the danger.

A meme flashes by on your feed. It's absurd, slightly offensive, maybe oddly funny. You scroll, smirk, maybe even screenshot it to send to a friend. “I know this is wrong but—” is the new preface. The image is blurry, low-effort. It’s meant to look cheap. That’s part of the charm. The disarming, low-stakes feel of internet humor is exactly how it slips through your filters.

But then another meme shows up. Same punchline, slightly louder. A TikTok comment thread echoes the joke—word for word. The next day, someone uses the same “bit” in a group chat. This time without irony.

By the time you hear it spoken out loud by someone who means it, you’re no longer shocked. You’ve been softened. Acclimated. This is how hate gets normalised: not through force, but through repetition in disguise.

We’re not talking about hate that announces itself with jackboots and slogans. We’re talking about something slipperier. Hate that arrives cloaked in sarcasm. Hate that laughs at itself so you can’t tell if it’s real. Hate that hides in plain sight—until it doesn’t.

Some people call it “irony poisoning.” Others call it meme culture, edgy humor, or just “the internet being the internet.” But beneath the postmodern in-jokes and nihilist aesthetics is a quiet shift in what people are willing to accept, amplify, and eventually endorse. Not because they agree. Not at first. But because they’ve seen it too many times to care.

The story of modern hate speech isn’t one of sudden radicalisation. It’s a slow boil. The meme you laughed at last year is the opinion someone is shouting today. And the person shouting it? Might still think it’s a joke. Might not. That’s the trick.

It’s not a new phenomenon. Satire has long been a tool to critique, but also to shield. In 2024, a political candidate in Europe made headlines for using absurdist meme videos to gain support among younger voters. His campaign denied endorsing hate—but his content regularly flirted with anti-immigrant dog whistles, using meme formats that originated in fringe online spaces. By the time fact-checkers pointed out the overlap, the content had already gone viral.

Platform design plays a role too. TikTok’s sound remix culture makes it easy to spread a line—out of context, recontextualised, detached from its source. A creator might share a joke mocking feminism. Another duets it. Then someone adds it to a dance trend. Suddenly, millions hear it without questioning its premise. When called out, each poster claims they were “just using the sound.” And maybe they were. But the impact outpaces the intent.

On Reddit and X (formerly Twitter), the language shifts again. Words like “based,” “red-pilled,” and “NPC” were once niche. Now they’re embedded in mainstream slang. Some people use them without knowing their origins. Others use them to signal allegiance. The lines between gamer irony, internet cynicism, and ideological alignment have blurred so thoroughly that it’s hard to tell who believes what—or if belief even matters anymore.

But it does. Because belief doesn’t have to look like doctrine. It can look like habit. When you laugh at something repeatedly, you lower your defenses. When you engage—even critically—you feed the algorithm. And when enough people feed the system, it stops needing context.

Creators have learned to weaponize this. Influencers who toe the line between “provocative” and “problematic” often frame backlash as proof they’re “saying what others won’t.” The audience splits: one side defends them as truth-tellers, the other as comedians. Both boost their visibility. And both erode the notion that certain lines shouldn’t be crossed.

It’s tempting to say that everyone should just grow thicker skin. That speech is speech, and humor is subjective. But normalisation isn’t about offense. It’s about the long-term impact of repeated exposure. Studies from digital media labs in the US and UK show that frequent exposure to dehumanising jokes—particularly when framed as satire—dulls moral judgment over time. People who regularly consume ironic content mocking marginalized groups are more likely to rate openly hateful statements as “not that serious.”

And this isn’t limited to teens in online forums. Workplace Slack channels, school group chats, comment sections under news posts—all are permeated by this tone. It’s the language of plausible deniability. “It’s not that deep.” “You’re overthinking it.” “It’s just a meme.”

But language shapes perception. And when perception gets reshaped to tolerate or trivialise harm, the stage is set for real consequences. In 2023, a survey by the Anti-Defamation League found that nearly half of young adults in the US had encountered Holocaust denial content online—often in meme form. Many weren’t sure if the content was serious. That uncertainty is itself a form of damage.

When you can’t tell if something is a joke or a threat, you hesitate. You downplay. You move on. That gap is where hate takes root.

This isn’t a moral panic. It’s a cultural shift in how we metabolize information. What’s “funny” isn’t neutral. It reflects what a society finds acceptable to ridicule, who it deems disposable, and what narratives are allowed to fester under the guise of humor.

It also reflects what people are afraid to challenge. No one wants to be the killjoy in the group chat. No one wants to be told they “can’t take a joke.” And so silence becomes compliance. Not because people agree—but because calling it out feels exhausting, risky, or futile.

This is especially true for younger users navigating digital life as a primary social arena. For many, the internet isn’t a supplement to reality—it is reality. And in that space, clout is currency. If calling out a harmful meme means losing likes or being ostracised, most won’t risk it. Even teachers and parents struggle to keep up. The language evolves too quickly, the references too layered.

So what does resistance look like in this landscape? Not puritanism. Not censorship. But literacy.

Media literacy, meme literacy, and cultural memory. Knowing where a phrase came from before you repost it. Recognising when irony is masking ideology. Understanding that “funny” doesn’t mean harmless—and that impact outlasts intention.

It also means asking better questions. Why do certain jokes go viral while others don’t? Who benefits from normalising cruelty? What beliefs are being softened through repetition?

It means pushing platforms to take responsibility—not just for overt hate speech, but for the pipelines that incubate it. That includes examining how recommendation algorithms amplify edgy content, how moderation frameworks fail to catch coded language, and how creators with massive reach are rewarded for “walking the line” rather than respecting it.

And it means holding space for discomfort. Not every joke is worth defending. Not every meme needs to be explained away. Sometimes, choosing not to share is the most powerful act.

Because normalization is cumulative. It doesn’t happen all at once. It happens one post at a time. One like. One comment. One “haha I probably shouldn’t laugh but—”

And the line between ironic hate and real hate? It doesn’t disappear. It just moves, slowly, until you forget where it was.Until one day, it’s not a joke anymore. It’s a po licy. A headline. A punch. A funeral.

This isn’t about humorlessness. It’s about cultural hygiene. We don’t need fewer memes. We need better immune systems. We need to remember that not everything ironic is harmless, not everything edgy is brave, and not everything viral is funny just because everyone’s laughing. Because sometimes, the laugh is the warning. And the silence that follows? That’s how it spreads.