Memes and Absurdism

June 1, 2026
By Aathreya Kadambi

Something I’ve been thinking about for a long time is absurdist thought and humor. This post feels absolutely unfinished, incoherent, and incorrect, but I probably won’t return to it so I’m just going to publish it and maybe remember it again one day.

I guess it serves better as a jumble ideas I want to one day connect better, or at least a collection of open-ended impractical questions that never needed answers.

Absurdism

I have yet to read Camus, but my understanding of absurdism is the idea that searching for meaning need-not end in a nihilistic answer (there is no meaning), or endless meaning-seeking or unfalsifiable assumptions.

Many meaning-searchers either give up and become nihilists or pursue meaning-creation to satisfy their unrealistic desires. On the other hand, what if we simply abandon the question all-together: it was never a valid question to begin with!

Why not cherish personal meaning (and a seeming lack of cosmic meaning) instead?

A Posteriori Jargon: Meaning as a Social Concept that Needs Identity Signaling

So, how do we create personal meaning? One solution is to cherish shared experiences by creating mutual language, art, and representations: the formation of an identity.

Aesthetic Compression: Commoditizing Experiences via Styles

The irony of representing a collection of shared experiences in terms of jargon and language is that it makes it far easier to commoditize! In time, it is easily converted into an aesthetic: one that can be bought, performed, promoted, misused, and overproduced into incoherent slop.

If they were so easily broken, were they ever meaningful anyway? I mean, at least they make people feel something!

Does Humor Demand Coherence?

Or does coherence ruin a joke?

Example 1:

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To get to the other side.

Example 2:

What is the secret to limitless power contained within the Dragon Scroll?

Nothing/a mirror.

Meaning and Coherence

I sometimes wonder why we mark incoherence as more wholesome. Avoiding over-interpretation can feel less manipulative and more “authentic”. And not imposing a deep structure allows projection and feels inclusive and safe.

Is meaning something that only appears as local coherence signals but cannot be reasonably sustained across a network?