The weird way kids use memes is absolutely melting my brain

My 6 year old noisily entered the house. He makes most things loud and I love him for it.

He dropped his orange school bag in an awkward place where it shouldn’t be, then walked over to our Alexa studio, which is next to the family TV, and started chattering.

“ALEXA…” he said with the speech pattern of a drunken hell dwarf. “PLAY RICK ROLL… ON SOUNDTRACK.”

He always asks Alexa to play songs.ON SOUNDTRACK.”

That’s when it happened. Thirty-five years after the song was first released (and 16 years after “Rickrolling” first broke online), my house rocked to the sweet, sweet strains of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

How did it happen? How did this 6 year old boy find out about Rick Astley and this song? The reasons were unclear.

So I asked him. Why? why Did he randomly come into our house and ask Alexa to play Never Gonna Give You Up?

I was gutted immediately.

“FATHER. Don’t you even know what a Rickroll is?”

As Principal Skinner once asked, am I out of touch? Or is it the children who are wrong?

WHASSSSSUUUUUP

Parenting books will not help you. Nothing written or published in our day and age can prepare you for the hell of state-of-the-art parenting. They can’t teach you how to use Roblox or Fortnite or how your son/daughter “accidentally” used your credit card to spend $100 on Minecoins.

They won’t tell you anything about memes in particular. But one thing I do know: children love memes

i have two boys A 6 year old and a 9 year old. Kids this age love memes for some reason.

But not like you or me love memes. no They don’t consume memes like we do, they don’t talk about memes like we do. They don’t even think about her in the same way. It is strange.

Contrary to the “kids get too much screen time” narrative, most young children are not as attached to online culture as we adults are. Due to screen time limitations and intermittent access to online devices, they don’t scroll through Instagram stories like teenagers or mindlessly flip through TikToks.

No, they’re exposed to memes the old-fashioned way – in the playground.

Much like the old days, when urban legends spread from older siblings to savvy younger brothers and beyond, kids are constantly proliferating pre-existing memes that are completely detached from the context of their origins. They are consumed through osmosis, via a family member or a YouTube streamer, and then quickly co-opted. They quickly become part of a bizarre common language. Nonsensical words that are just shouted at the playground but don’t make any literal sense.

That’s why my 9-year-old yells “JUICIOUS CHINESE MEAL” at totally inappropriate times. Why my 6 year old knows every word of “Never Gonna Give You Up” and finds it hilarious despite not really understanding why this song has had such a massive impact on generations of people who are always online.

I clearly remember driving my oldest son and one of his friends to an indoor trampoline center. Unprompted, a child rolled down my car window before shouting “MAH NAME JEFF” to passers-by on the street. All the children burst out laughing. I was shocked.

I guarantee none of these kids have seen 22 Jump Street, and I also guarantee none of them could pick Channing Tatum from a series if their lives depended on it. So what happened? My guess: one day a cool kid on the playground said “MAH NAME JEFF” and everyone laughed. So everyone always said it. Again and again. Like a boiled Budweiser ad.

WASUUPPPPPPP.

In a way, that’s normal. Memes have permeated our broader culture to the point where you don’t need to understand their history to find them funny. There is a collective, shared understanding that “this is funny”. Memes evolve. We apply your concepts to new, increasingly complex situations and implicitly do justice to them receive it. We laugh together because that’s normal. Somehow it makes us laugh.

But kids take it to the next level. Now that shit doesn’t even have to be done sense.

One day I was having dinner with my children. We laughed and joked and I started talking in a silly voice. I can’t remember anything I said or what the voice was like, but my kids lost speech so I just kept going. After a while it got old. The laughter died down. That’s when my eldest child stopped and asked me quite seriously.

“What meme was that from?”

Double Rainbow

When it comes to consuming memes, kids are separated from time and space. They just don’t give a fuck. Old memes, new memes… there is no difference between the two. Your world is the playground. What is relevant there is relevant to them as individuals and as a collective. That’s it. That’s all that counts.

My 9 year old regularly comes home and says, “Hey dad, see this cool new meme?” Then, without a hint of irony, ask me on Google “Double Rainbow.”

But while kids are held back by trends and understanding new things, they exist on top. Your meme consumption is a different, almost sublime, experience. We just adopted the meme, they were born into it. Children exist on another level, detached from meaning. They simply yell a word or phrase like a distorted incantation and the desired effect is cast on them as if by magic. EXPELLIARMUS! It’s almost admirable. Without any claim.

How will this develop? How will that translate when this cursed generation of kids have direct, untethered access to the Internet on their own cell phones and laptops? It’s impossible to tell. All bets are off. Only one thing is certain: we will be left behind. We get laughed at, taunted in group chats or TikToks or whatever their preferred platform is. That’s the nature of things.

Whatever the adults are doing now, it’s wrong. Sorry, Principal Skinner, these are just facts. Whatever they plan to do, it’s the only way forward. You could get used to that. Might as well hop aboard while there’s still time.

MAH NAME JEFF.