General Internet Memes

[LilBit]

Does anyone hate all those sappy internet posts as much as I do? It is so incredibly painful sometimes because of a sufferer's isolation or cutting off someone to read stuff like:

"If someone wants you in their life they will make time for you."

"If someone doesn't appreciate your presence, let them feel your absence."

And on and on about stuff that is so horribly depressing when you are hurting from a sufferer ignoring you or isolating. That kind of thing does soooo NOT apply when PTSD is on the scene.

 

[WillyKat]

There are a lot of memes out there that don't work for us. I don't think the internet has much to do with it, except that its a convenient place to disseminate and repeat them ad nauseum.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately; there will be a section on memes in the book I'm writing. For example, there are cultural meme (western culture) that says love has a lot to do with buying things, or that getting the family together for Christmas is a joyous time for everyone, or that someone that wants a low pressure job is some kind of loser.

A lot of them do not apply to us. And you're right, the internet blasts them out all over the place. The trick is to find a way to ignore them and create our own that do work for us.

 

[quic]

"If someone doesn't appreciate your presence, let them feel your absence."

Everything must be considered within the appropriate context. Statements like these obviously do not apply to people with any one of a hundred ailments. You would never use a statement like this with a person who was severely disabled, or battling a disease like cancer.

Why would we even think to apply it to someone with PTSD?

 

[Deleted member 1860]

I've been anti-Internet-meme pretty much since I first got online, which was waaay before my official diagnosis. That is, they've always annoyed me or rubbed me the wrong way.

I look at it this way. Cute little sayings will make people feel better if they're dealing with sadness on the level of a bad hair day and such. That is, it's pretty much shallow fluff. We lie so far outside of this realm that cute little sayings just don't apply. And it's hurtful when others incorrectly apply these to us.

Just ignore the memes. They throw everybody and everything into the same proverbial basket when the truth is that we all have unique stories.

 

[rightkindofme]

I think that different people need to hear different things. I don't think that everyone needs to hear exactly what I need to hear (the world would be a terrible place if that were true).

They can have their memes. I'll have mine. :)

 

[Upside Down Eagle]

LilBit, I love your profile pic. It's like GrumpyCat and I can relate to GrumpyCat a lot, who is also an internet meme. Most of those cliché memes don't work for me either. They're designed for "the normal masses". They deal with problems that the normal masses have.

But then again there are memes that help me. Most of these are spiritual but others a bit more down to earth. I've even made a collection of them on my computer to cheer me up when I feel down. These are some of my favorites:

• When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
• The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you.
• You never know how strong you are, until being strong is the only choice you have.
• The more real you get, the more unreal the world gets.
• Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within.
• It is no measure of health to be adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

I could just go on and on but I will spare you the incredibly spiritual ones. Some of those memes contain valuable wisdom.

 

[LilBit]

Radise, feel free to send me some incredibly spiritual ones!

 

[billie]

I thought majority of those memes were made up by kids?..... man I feel confused lol

 

[Deleted member 1860]

@billie,
I googled 'meme' after someone made fun of me for not knowing a particular one. The truth is that many/most memes are spread by young people in their teens and early 20's. Don't have something original to say? Say it with a meme! (In college I told my friends I'd block them if they didn't stop the lame email forward memes. Yeah, it annoyed me that much!)

 

[Upside Down Eagle]

I'm a kid at heart :P It's probably more of an internet-generation thingy? Not sure...

@LilBit here you go but I warned you, haha! I believe this, for me they are very important. It helps me cope big time with going through a life on earth as a person who has PTSD.

• You don't have a soul. You are a soul, you have a body.
• If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
• Darkness is an illusion created by the mind, we are never-ending light.
• You get there by realizing you are already there.
• When gazing up at the night sky, it is not you that sees the universe. But the universe that sees itself, in human form.
• Life is a school where you learn to remember what your soul already knows.

Solara, I love memes sometimes just because they're so empty-minded. I've spent hours on 9gag, a meme site. It might be a complete waste of time, but it was great just getting my mind off all the serious things my mind was fixating on....

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Yes, I associate meme with platitude.... I think I'll go back to living under that rock. At least I can keep out the fluff. Maybe I'm too realistic for my own good at times? If anything, memes just make me feel further from the mainstream because they almost never apply. Then my mind gets running and I start to think that I'm such a freak because some simple observation masquerading as being profound doesn't soothe me. But I digress...

 

[LilBit]

I find that many amuse me or comfort me. But.... the ones that make me feel bad about my sufferer and ptsd usually pop up on my newsfeed at particularly bad moments. Just because our sufferers cannot say or be those things does not mean they don't care about us. They love how they can with what they have. My sufferer almost strangled one day trying to choke out some words. The helpless look on her face meant way more to me than most people's words ever could. She never chokes unless it is positive emotion.