Introducing Your Parents to 2025 Memes
Monday, June 2, 2025.
When Boomer Blinks Meet Zoomer Irony—and Something Unexpected Happens
The Setup: One Phone, One Parent, One Cryptic Meme
The trend is deceptively simple.
On TikTok and Reels, a Gen Z or late Millennial sets the stage:
“I’m going to show my parents the memes we laugh at in 2025. Let’s see what happens.”
Then, armed with a phone and a sense of ironic detachment, they swipe through memes like:
A raccoon in a wedding dress captioned “marrying into chaos.”
A crying emoji photoshopped onto a Roomba captioned: “Self-care after group therapy.”
Text: “It’s not gaslighting, it’s adaptive reality rendering.”
A 4-panel meme where a frog says, “I am the problem,” then sighs and makes a spreadsheet about it.
Their parents blink. Or worse—nod slowly, trying to understand. Sometimes they chuckle out of social obligation. Sometimes, they erupt with genuine, confused laughter.
But always, you can see it on their faces:
“I have absolutely no idea what any of this means.”
And that’s the point.
What Is This Trend Really About?
This trend isn’t just Gen Z laughing at their parents for not understanding memes.
It’s about testing cultural fluency across generations.
It’s a low-stakes way of asking a deeply human question:
“Do you get me?”
Or maybe:
“Can we still laugh together even if we don’t speak the same emotional language anymore?”
In a time when families are increasingly fractured by politics, pandemic-era burnout, and screen-induced emotional drift, this trend is surprisingly tender.
The meme becomes a bridge—or a mirror—depending on how it's received.
The Meme Gap: Why They Don’t Get It (and That’s the Point)
To understand this phenomenon, we need to look at how meme literacy has evolved:
🟦 Boomer Humor:
Structured. Linear. Narrative-driven. “Two guys walk into a bar…”
Clear conflict → resolution. Usually light sarcasm or moral payoff.
🟩 Gen X Humor:
Cynical. Wry. Think Far Side, Dilbert, or deadpan sitcoms.
A bit rebellious, but still comprehensible.
🟨 Millennial Humor:
Meta. Emotionally transparent but disguised as sarcasm.
Memes often address burnout, therapy, student loans, and existential dread—but with clean Canva formatting.
🟥 Gen Z + Alpha Humor (2024–2025):
Absurdist. Nonlinear. Post-ironic.
It’s “jokes about the trauma of living through five recessions by age 19” meets “a goose screaming in vintage Arial font.”
If you haven’t spent 10,000 hours online or been publicly vulnerable in an Instagram story about your disassociation cycles, the joke probably isn’t going to land.
And that’s OK.
Best-Case Outcomes of This Meme Trend
✅ Parents chuckle, kids explain → bonding moment.
✅ Parents admit confusion but stay curious → trust is built.
✅ Both parties realize “understanding” isn’t necessary for “connection.”
And of course:
✅ You go viral when your dad asks if “gaslight gatekeep girlboss” is a Three Stooges routine.
Worst-Case Outcomes
❌ Parent tries too hard to “get it” and ends up quoting meme syntax wrong for three years.
“Is this giving... slay?”
❌ Parent misinterprets irony as real belief.
“Why are you laughing about being depressed? You need a job.”
(This is often followed by generational trauma resurfacing and possibly an unplanned family intervention.)
❌ Meme triggers something serious.
“Wait, is that about your breakup?”
“Are you... okay?”
“Who is that raccoon?”
Translating Memes Into Family Therapy Homework
As a couples and family therapist, I’m not here to ruin your TikTok content—but I will suggest this:
You can use this trend intentionally to build understanding.
Try this:
Curate a few memes that represent how you actually experience life—burnout, anxiety, weird joy, awkward affection.
Show them to your parent and ask, “What do you think this means?”
Don’t correct right away. Just listen.
Then say:
“That’s how I feel. I know it’s weird, but this is how we say things now.”
It becomes a gentle exercise in empathy. A meme version of “Let me teach you my dialect.”
Bonus: Ask your parent to show you a joke they found funny when they were your age.
See what happens.
What Makes a Meme “Parent-Proof”?
If your goal is laughter, not confusion, stick with memes that include:
Animals doing vaguely human things
A clear emotional cue (like a laugh track in visual form)
No niche internet or trauma-specific jargon
A format that resembles a punchline
Want to cause chaos? Show them:
Tumblr threads arguing about moral philosophy through Frog and Toad screenshots
AI-generated Shrek characters confessing their tax evasion sins
TikToks where people cry about their childhoods while making soup
Then just wait.
This Meme Trend as a Mirror of the Family System
In family systems theory, we talk about emotional cutoff—when people disconnect because communication feels impossible.
Memes, believe it or not, are one way back in.
This trend is a soft repair attempt.
A child saying:
“Here’s my world. It’s weird. But will you meet me in it?”
Even if the parent doesn’t get the meme, the attempt is the medicine.
If they say, “I don’t get it, but I’m glad you showed me”—that’s a Secure Attachment moment.
If they laugh and say, “You’ve always been weird, haven’t you?”—that’s affection disguised as nostalgia.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Shifman, L. (2014). Memes in Digital Culture. MIT Press.
Nissenbaum, A., & Shifman, L. (2017). Internet memes as contested cultural capital: The case of 4chan’s /b/ board. New Media & Society, 19(4), 483–501. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815609313
Turkle, S. (2015). Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. Penguin.
Phillips, W. (2015). This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture. MIT Press.
Vogels, E. A. (2020). Millennials stand out for their tech use, but older generations also embrace digital life. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/09/09/