Passionate Fixations with Traumedy: The Trials and Tribulations of Gen Z’s Beloved Survival Weapon
I hope I am not the only person who has found themselves in a Groundhog Day loop during this bizarre pandemic.
I find myself waking up unreasonably late, unplugging my phone from the charger, and, quite shamefully, opening TikTok before responding to any messages. My "for you page" often fills up with videos containing a format of exchange that tend to go as such:
Person 1: *makes strange but relatable joke*
Person 2: "Woah, dude, you are like freakin hilarious bro."
Person 1: "Thanks fam! It's all the trauma!"
And scene.
How lucky I am to be graced with such tasteful prose in the comfort of my bed. Those considered to be the voices of my generation bellow their cries of anguish on this god-forsaken app just for my lazy ass to respond with a half-enthusiastic release of breath through my nose. These everyday instances of trauma as a theme in comedy led me down a rabbit-hole of overthinking.
Why is Gen Z so vehemently infatuated with their branding of "Traumedy" as a means to cope? Why do we so adamantly chase the dream of being remembered for our absurdist memes and outrageous humour while simultaneously craving death at every waking hour? I mean, I read a headline once that stated: "Our generation will be known for Memes and wanting to Die…". Ouch. These moods connected through nonsensical juxtapositions of image and font are reminiscent of macaroni and newspaper art collages of our early childhood days, and the clear objective of either is lost to me.
In all honesty, I find myself asking these questions because I am a victim of the never-ending cycle of self-deprecation as a means of satisfaction too. I think I can somewhat represent my generation's dependence on Traumedy based on my experience with trauma and how it flows into our generation's collective trauma. Sick of the word trauma yet? Just wait.
Like probably everyone ever, I have a variety of discussion options when it comes to individual trauma. I will spare you my more fragile ones, as, like many people my age, I am still coming to terms with a it. Rather than jumping straight into grief and loss - yikes- (see I can't even avoid Traumedy in my own damn article about it), I think I'll cater towards mental health as my starting point. To make a very long story short, I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was Eleven, which might seem young to many, but for all the issues I had in my early childhood, this diagnosis was made astonishingly late. At thirteen, I decided that my ADHD should become a distinct part of my character and personality. This came about on my quest as a shy kid to beat the odds and find a way to be attention's sweet center. ADHD indeed garnered both negative and positive attention from a lot of my classmates, friends, and family members, and taught me that being chemically imbalanced automatically moved me forward in the hierarchy of comedic prowess. I openly mocked the silly parts, like the short-term memory, the lack of filter, the hyperactivity, and the general loudness. People found this new side of me entertaining, and as a dedicated theatre kid, I longed to act out the part. As my disorder's caricature grew larger than life, so did the empty repression bubble inside of me. The space in which I had to hide the darker struggles, the bits of mania that go with ADHD, the medication-induced illnesses, the harsh reality of giving 120 percent into my work, and getting back results dubbing me inferior to classmates who were "naturally smart." Once again, I will spare you most of the details of existing as a young woman with ADHD for now, but hopefully, you can now see even from a young age, I split myself into dualities of being.
I made the active choice to split the functions of my left and right brain into binary roles. Each governed a different version of me: one crazy, one emotionless; one fun, the other intellectual and boring; on meds Alana, and off meds Alana. The trauma wasn't the disorder, it was the effects of my coping with it that forever wounded my emotional perception. I pursued both acceptance of my differences through the mockery of it and repressive denial of any of the strange downsides that were harder to explain. I chose both as my coping strategies without allowing room for fusion. As far as definitions of trauma go, my ADHD crisis might be a benign example. However, I feel it works well as a blueprint in explaining the formation of collective Traumedy dialogues that pump the hearts of Generation Z, as it highlights the drawbacks of dual perceptions.
The general pattern here seems to be disillusionment with modern existence, a recurring problem for all ages. Our generation has both internalized it and vocalized it through a misleading trope of comedy. Here once again, we see Trauma and Comedy paired together to the extreme in order to come to terms with defining our purpose, and whether there is such a purpose at all. It all sounds bizarre, but Traumedy is wonderful and disastrous all at once. Like most things in life, it is not as Black and White as we'd like to expect. You don't need me to tell you that modern societal and technological innovations, **cough *the presence of social media* cough**, have everything to do with the chaotic upbringing of Gen Z. From platforms like Vine and TikTok to Instagram and Twitter, it seems as we deal with our own intimate hardships in privacy, we have simultaneously discovered a way in which we can all carry the burden of our collective melancholy. These TikTok videos that reassure us that a person's relationship with trauma can explain their state-of-the-art sense of humour remind us that no one stands alone. Maybe it's not the healthiest way of dealing with inner turmoil, but it binds us together in an uplifting manner. The earliest members of this Generation have lived through so much change in a small period. We come together through humour because although we did not start the majority of current global issues, we make the active choice to engage with them, to be present in the global scene.
This is not to say that the oxymoronic notion of Traumedy doesn't come with an enormous array of concern. Memes have become such a mainstream communication method that lots of young people receive their news and access current events through memes. The March 13th, 2020 death of twenty six-year-old Breonna Taylor, an innocent black woman shot to death by police in her own home, is a heart-breaking example. TikTok became a place of activism as the Black Lives Matter movement saw many members speak for the platform's cause. One popular trend was for a user to introduce a joke to merit attention, such as "this is what my mom would say to me if she saw me at a college party," followed by a catchy rap tune with the lyrics: "Arrest. The Killers. Of Breonna. Taylor." The intention to spread the word of injustice was there. Still, the method was dodgy, as it seemed to make Breonna Taylor's death a meme trend, taking away from the extremely horrifying nature of police brutality in the United States. It is a tragic case of performative allyship, another issue that stems from the notion of "Traumedy" among our generation, with the word performative expressing it all.
Social Media reigns as the dominant contributor of entertainment for our generation, and these platforms are rooted in the act of performance. These performances of media and lifestyle bleed into the aspects of social media involving information sharing. We once again perform some action of comedy to cope with the uneasiness of our future livelihoods. We seek opportunities to protest. To educate ourselves, to somehow alter the future that has always been presented to us as bleak. The struggle to pursue that desire to change arises from the inability to fully release ourselves from the safe haven our coping mechanisms' offer. Humour is the only guide we have known in our blind journey through pain, and we have stuck to it because of the temporary soothing relief that comes from laughter's addictive healing properties, yet we are never wholly relieved, just merely distracted.
Laughing as a preventative measure from bawling is one of history's oldest gimmicks, and this pattern is not new. Hopefully, what our generation might learn, is how to manage our Traumedy fantasy properly. I believe it is fine to smile at our tragic existence, and I don't, by any means, want to quiet the sonorous ensemble of laughter that my fellow Zoomers have orchestrated so delightfully. In fact, I should be the mascot of self-deprecating humour since I use it in every other sentence. I am proud that we are known to joke about how adamantly vocal we are about grave societal injustices and simultaneously awful at speaking to a stranger on the phone. We cannot always rely on comedy to heal all of our wounds, though. This leads us back all the way with the general problem of accepting things as binary tensions.
Like the classic Zoomer I am, let’s take it back to me and what I shared before. I cannot function as two separate shells of my being. I am me all the time, with all parts included in every spare inch. I am me on medication, writing my academic essays on Ovid and Dante, and reading collections of Harlem Renaissance poetry on my library break. I am me off my medication, laughing way too loud in my friends' homes, wildly re-enacting something stupid I did, or reminding them again why Megamind is a hidden cinematic masterpiece. These aspects of me all exist in a mutual space. I will always have moments in each day that are a struggle, and moments where this part of my identity thrives and allows me to stand out. They are separate aspects but are all parts to a greater whole. The notion of Traumedy acts as a central theme in the building of my distinct personhood and our present dialogue.
Beauty exists in both joy and sorrow, and it is imperative, if anything, to find a balance between the two. Humour will always have a prominent place in culture, as it should. Trauma and comedy should not be too dualistic, nor so meshed together that either aspect is indecipherable. I believe there should be some room for empathetic meaning, and ways to approach our traumas without the mask of humour always clouding hard truths. This is my best offer of a solution to the Traumedy obsession, but I will provide a poetic conclusion to the generation still searching for a serotonin boost:
Maybe we will one day uniformly realize the power within our brilliant collage of emotional turmoil so that the glow of our inner light will emanate brighter than the stars, and finally warm each cold heart, once neglected, now reawakened.
Photography by Nathalie Taylor