RE: The Honk pill ( Clown World ).
Avoy said:
I don't see much difference between the "latest meme" and the "latest trend". Both require that you accept and embrace them to be seen as cool by your peer group.
Sometimes it's a good exercise to look at a word's original meaning.
The word "meme" was coined in analogy to "gene". A meme is an idea that is replicated from person to person. A trend or a fad, in the context of human society, is a short-lived meme. By definition, all trends are memes, but not all memes are trends - memes can be very long-lasting. There is a difference.
It's true that there is an element of peer pressure and group acceptance in the spread of memes, but that doesn't tell you much about the memes themselves. Some memes spread because they're useful for survival; others because they carry information that people find relevant to their lives and experiences; others because they're simply funny.
This particular meme has a lot of information embedded in it. A perspective on the general state of things (crazy), the scale at which the phenomenon takes place (global), an attitude towards the perceived scenario (humorous / nihilistic), and finally an aesthetic through which that attitude is exerted (clowns). The aesthetic is recognisable and easy to replicate, making the meme all the more viral.
Yes, there are teenagers who will be posting about the Clown World because they think it's cool. And being adults we can't hope but to find the whole thing silly. Cringe-worthy even. Who cares? The core idea is solid: the world is batshit crazy. It's better to point things out than to say nothing, and this meme is efficient at pointing things out. As far as Internet memes go, this is pretty good.