Seeing that America is closer than ever to the brink of entering a 3rd World War, no one was safe from seeing new ways of making jokes about the seriousness of the political controversy.
Memes have been around since the birth of social media being an outlet for all ages to enjoy a laugh on topics that may be too serious to handle face head-on alone so as a group, people can come together to find new ways on ways to go around the negatives of any issue. But is there a line that students in specific have been crossing?
Students broke out with these memes when Donald Trump decided it to be necessary to assassinate Iranian general Qasem Soleiman saying his reasoning was “We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.” People around the world did not feel the same way, thinking that because of this drone attack, there was a possibility of World War 3 and children were in fear for a draft. This was the main topic of the memes trying to lessen tensions and the ideas of having to leave their families at such a young age going into war.
On the social app Tik Tok, students around the school created snippets of themselves preparing for the draft saying they are either preparing for the war either with gaming apps i.e “Fortnite” and Call Of Duty or becoming transgender or hiding themselves with a hijab to not be apart of the war. These were also forms of memes on twitter and Instagram stating because they are good at video games, they are going to war.
Students such as Hafiz Adesina making small videos about the topic state “I was making it just for jokes. Didn’t think crazy about it.” However other students that are Muslim felt offended by these statements stating, “guys put on hijabs was just disgusting and I don’t get why they think that’s funny. Women are getting killed and bombed because of their religion and you are using it to get TikTok famous,” said Ramisa Chowdury, who practices Islam and used to wear a hijab and still wears it in the mosque.
There are of course going to be people always taking offense to silly jokes on the internet but when talking about political issues affecting the lives of a whole group, students should be aware of a line they shouldn’t cross when trying to take issues lightly and go on with their day.
