Fandom in Context: What Does It Mean To 'Live In A Society'

"We live in a society," or so we are told. For the past few years, Joker memes, both sincere and ironic, inundated the internet with complaints about living in a supposed society. Strangely enough, until about two weeks ago, the Joker never uttered such a thing. In the trailer for Zack Snyder's Justice League (which undoubtedly readers of this column are familiar with), Snyder and Jared Leto made memer dreams come true when the Joker turned to Batman and said those five magic words. Like Bart Simpson's classroom, the internet roared with approval. One day, we'll hear about the babies born the moment Joker said, "We lie in a society." Joker babies, we'll call them. Cute and vicious, they'll be our new rulers.

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— Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) February 14, 2021

Memes appearing in movies are nothing new, especially in the fan-service-first world of superhero cinema. If anything, it's getting a bit stale. X-Men: The Last Stand included "I'm the Juggernaut, Bitch" way back in 2006, and two years ago, "Spider-man Pointing at Spider-man" swung into a shot from Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse. The inclusion of fan-generated material delights audiences because it places billion-dollar franchises and fans on the same level. "I recognize this from the internet," the accomplished netizen says to their dates, who are undoubtedly impressed. But like all things Joker, the "We live in a society" meme feels different. It's more…twisted.

The "we live in a society" phenomenon is vaguer than other memes. Its origins do not come from a Batman comic or a blockbuster franchise, but rather the acid vat of the internet, where irony and sincerity bubble together in equal measure. It's a perfect meme because its meaning can shift depending on who is using it and why. The meme mocks the quasi-philosophical underpinnings of the Joker while simultaneously embodying them. The Joker became Guy Fawkes' mask 2.0 in Todd Phillips' Oscar-winning Joker, but some memers rejected this interpretation. They mocked the idea that the Joker could inhabit the plight of the disaffected, let alone gamers. Still, others were more taken with it and put on clown makeup.

The meme kicked off in 2016 with image macros that defended oppressed gamers, if such a thing exists.. Yashdeep Kanhai, a 21-year-old law student from India, helps run several Facebook meme groups, including Dank Memes Melt Steel Beams, Meme Supreme and, of course, Gamers Rise Up. He says that the memes started from a sincere place. These images matched video game characters with inspirational messages like "I am a gamer not because I don't have a life, but because I choose to have many." Along with these video game-based memes, he says, came the Joker. While some pages focused on the video game heroes, he says, "other pages put nihilistic quotes with a pic of Joker, like 'as a kid you idolize Batman, and when you grow up realize Joker makes more sense.'"

Memers can only cringe at these sincere versions for so long. They took the Joker and his apolitical ideology and turned it into a joke that Mr. J would be proud of. For roughly 80 years, the Joker has been ever-present in society. Starting as one of the background villains in Batman's Rogue's Gallery, the Joker soon took on a life of his own, becoming even more popular than Batman. In today's pop culture landscape, the Joker archetype is everywhere.

Over the last 20 years, anti-heroes have been a massively popular form of entertainment, from adult fare like Breaking Bad and Deadpool to Disney's G-rated versions, like Maleficent and the upcoming Cruella. Audiences are more interested in the bad guys and what makes them tick because society's villains are starting to make a lot more sense than its heroes. "The Joker – and I would argue that Heath Ledger is a linchpin here – certainly played an outsized role in that evolution," writes Professor Robert Peaslee of Texas Tech University, the editor of The Joker: A Serious Study of the Clown Prince of Crime. "9/11 made the West curious about two things simultaneously: where does violent aggression come from, and are we, ourselves, violent in terms of what we support and tolerate?" As the world descended into forever wars, increased surveillance states and the rising tide of fascism, the Joker's worldview became more appealing as we dealt with the effects of near-constant terror and fear. "The Joker is for modern audiences a heuristic for understanding chaos and nihilism, but also for understanding pain, trauma, and codependence," says Professor Peaslee. The power of average citizens in the political sphere decreased during the last 20 years, so characters like the Joker began to make a lot more sense.

If the Joker is a symbol for the negativity and cynicism caused by injustice, why shouldn't he be a symbol for disaffected gamers? Well, that's the joke. "The use of the 'we live in a society' as a meme is usually used to represent or mock a group of people who believe they're more oppressed than they actually are," writes Wynter, a moderator of /r/joker, which has 50,000 subscribers. "Generally these people put themselves in the situation they see as unfair, the 'joke' is that they (the 'oppressed') 'live in a society' that is acting negatively upon them."

The Joker's biggest gag is to show society's cruelty and indifference, a world that can turn a man into a clown that uses laughing gas to rob banks. The relationship makes sense. "I'm as familiar with the 'We Live in a Society' meme as was necessary to respond here, but no more so than anyone with a search engine might be in an hour or two," writes Professor Peaslee. "That said, from what I've been able to surmise, Joker's association is not terribly surprising. The Joker is perhaps today's most visible manifestation of the trickster, a narrative archetype that functions not so much to support or destroy society, but rather to question, critique, and basically mess with it." Joker and "We Live in a Society" can be read from both angles. To some, he is still this folk hero, carrying the weight of society's ills (see: Jared Leto's recent Jesus Joker pics). To others, his meme character represents cliché gripes from people who don't recognize their privilege.

The line between irony and sincerity becomes tricky when you're dealing with the Joker. That's the thing with nihilism: It's all fun and games until you realize that some things actually matter. Kanhai recognized this pattern in his groups. "These memes got so ironic that they started to be sexist, racist, misogynistic etc.," says Kanhai. "Memes were like 'Gamers are so oppressed that they don't even let us say the n-word anymore.' or 'Society doesn't even let us harass minorities anymore.'" Reddit banned the subs, and entire meme archives were lost. It was like the burning of Alexandria, but for, you know, sexy illustrations of "Harley Quinn":m/memes/she-was-his-queen/.

Stories of ironic bigotry turning into real prejudice fill the pages of Internet history books. And this was no different. "The member count was close to 700k, give or take, but then actual racists, sexists, homophobes started to join up, and then some of the memes were genuinely hateful and not ironic," writes Kanhai. As the mod of /r/Joker, Wynter had to take action. There's a responsibility to running a Joker group because of what the character represents and how easily it can be misinterpreted. "With our subreddit specifically we get a lot of people trying to share how they think they relate to him which on the surface might seem fine but these posts are oftentimes full of very hateful and even violent language." This connection to the Joker is what makes the Joker such a controversial character in the first place. "Because the Joker is known for his violent antics that this subset of fans believes expressing similar thoughts or desires is okay, they possibly feel everyone else must think similarly or they wouldn't like the character, but that simply isn't true."

So it's fair to ask: why is Zack Snyder's Justice League stepping into this mess? Judging by how badly fans wanted the line in a Joker movie, going as far as to start a 2018 Change.org petition, it screams of fan service--hardly a crime befitting of the Joker. The whole "Snyder Cut" endeavor is fan service, an exercise in giving fans exactly what they asked for. So does it matter if the line is being ironically or sincerely? Probably not. After all, it's just a joke.