By Ishani Singh
“I want to die.”
I hear this sentence at least 3 times per class in every one of my 7 classes every day of the week, followed by the standard peer encouragement: “same,” or “relatable.” With each day more stressful than the last, I guess we find comfort in sharing — embellishing our dread. It’s come to a point where when I hear a fellow student calling upon the gods to “kill them now,” I laugh hysterically along. Who am I kidding? I probably recite those exact phrases three or four times a day myself.
I honestly can’t pinpoint when exactly I became a dark humorist. I remember when I first heard someone joke about killing themself in middle school, my face got hot and I immediately began avoiding contact. I was instantly as uncomfortable as I possibly could have been. Over time, though, more and more people started joking like that, and I, unfortunately, have always been one to follow a crowd. I started off on the lower extreme: “I’m not gonna survive if I fail this Social Studies test.” I mean, nothing felt wrong in that statement.
But as I got to high school, I found myself falling deeper and deeper into the sick joke, reciting them vividly on a regular basis for almost no reason at all. I even found myself sharing them at home. At first, my mom would give me a spiel about being grateful for my life and what I have, but now she’s as accustomed to the jokes as I am.
I’ve always been aware that I was making a joke about suicide to project a statement about my course load or petty problems, but I’ve never felt guilt. And trust me when I say, I feel guilty over the littlest things. I mean, I’m the kind of girl who feels guilty for not saying “thank you” to the cafeteria workers when I collect my food; there is definitely wrong with this lack of remorse.
Suicide has become a joke.
It isn’t just the suicide jokes. That’s probably the smallest branch of the dark humor tree. On a daily basis, as I scroll through my Facebook wall, I see memes joking about death, orphans, female appearances, substance abuse and more.
If I really think about it, we aren’t doing anything wrong. We think we’re just being funny. We don’t mean to be flat out racist or disrespectful. The only way we can cope with the level of stress or bottled up negative feelings we have is by releasing them in the form of a harmless joke as opposed to actual hate speech. But here is something to think about.
In the midst of the giggles and validation you may receive with the dark, but admittedly hilarious joke you just made, can you 100% guarantee that not a single person, both in your audience or passing by, has never faced depression or suicidal thoughts in their lives?
You really can’t.
And you certainly cannot guarantee that they didn’t feel targeted or made fun of as a result of your “joke.” Can you imagine battling a crisis and having your entire school treating that same problem as a joke? Of course you don’t feel safe enough to come out and admit your crisis, so you just join in with the big joke.
It’s come to the point where we can’t differentiate the suicide jokes from the real cries for help.
Why is it that every time we hear a dark comment or scroll past a suicide meme on Facebook, we can’t help but snicker? When did we become such cynical young men and women? Most of us can easily distinguish what’s right from what’s wrong in life, can’t we? Why doesn’t that extend to what we find humorous?
I’m not asking you to change your sense of humor and forsake every dark joke in the book. That would probably make me the biggest hypocrite alive. But I urge you, nay, implore you to think about what you say as long and hard as I forced myself to before you tell the world your plans to drink bleach if you get a B on your next English essay.