‘Each meme is a rebellion’

The meme explosion around the LPG shortage has us rolling with laughter. Pics/ Instagram @THEINDIaNMEMES @COMEDYCULTURE

As LPG availability dropped and panic spread, so did the memes.

While scores of people scrambled to try and stock up back-up cylinders, I must confess I was one those "piped gas wale shaane" who was saved this stress - to my cylinder-dependent friends, sorry, bhai log.

We've borne witness to their anxiety not just through the widely shared images of queues outside cylinder distribution centres, but also through the wave of memes with biting satire on the crisis.

And while there are some who have lampooned Gen Z and Millennials as "unserious" for meme-fying the Iran-US war in the newsroom, we call this gallows humour.

Self-righteous elders will call it crass or frivolous, but true meme culture has always been unsanitised, gritty, witty, and a powerful way to use humour to speak truth to power.

We reached out to one of the few people on social media who doesn't just share memes, but is a voice for social injustice in the city: Balram Vishwakarma, one of the administrators of the popular Instagram meme page, Andheri West Shitposting. "What else can someone who is earning Rs 15,000-Rs 20,000 do? Woh meme toh banaiga na [It's obvious they will make a meme]," he says when we raise the issue.

When wars tear the world, pandemics strike, economies collapse, or kitchens go cold, what is the common man to do, panic or parody?

Some might argue that people might laugh at memes and forget to do anything about real problems, but Vishwakarma's stoic response is: "Dekho, every meme is a rebellion." He later texts me the inspiration for his statement, a quote from author and social critic George Orwell: "Every joke is a tiny revolution."

One of my favorite "revolutions" is a Reel that plays on the Dhurandhar phenomenon, depicting actor Ranveer Singh holding an LPG cylinder. A couple of friends representing Asian countries like North Korea, Japan, pass by, until in comes a man (representing India) with a cylinder slung over his shoulder but an attitude like the owner of an oil well.

Our comedian friend from Bengaluru, Rajat Taneja, knows a thing or two about dark humour; his industry has mastered it. Dhurandar/cylinder memes and people looking for lighter moments in a tough situation is not what gives him pause. Instead, it's hearing real-life stories about how some are monetising a crisis. "In Bengaluru, when the cafes they work out of were unable to serve food, founders started looking for funding for induction cooker startups."

What trips us up also is seeing brands using the public's coping mechanism as the latest marketing gimmick. Like a tasteless ad by a cab-hailing app that states: "LPG: Lowest Price Guaranteed".

For the rest of us common people, though, satire remains our strongest armour in an increasingly unfriendly world. Make more memes, we say.