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Why Is TikTok Obsessed With Sisyphus Pushing A Boulder? The Popular Greek Myth Explained
Have you seen somber TikToks showing a person performing meaningless, difficult and seemingly endless task, with the image often changing to that of a man pushing a giant boulder up a hill? Looks like you've stumbled upon a Sisyphus meme, as the eternal toil of the character described in Homer's Iliad has recently caught the eye of Gen Z posters. Unfamiliar with the myth (and the meme) of Sisyphus? We've got you covered.
Who Is Sisyphus?
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was the king and founder of the city-state Ephyra. According to legend, he angered Zeus when he told the river god Asopus that Zeus had carried off his daughter Aegina. Zeus sent Death (Thanatos) to carry Sisyphus off. When he was to be chained up by Thanatos, Sisyphus tricked him and chained Thanatos instead, leading to no mortals on Earth dying during that time. Eventually, Ares freed Thanatos and handed Sisyphus over to him, resulting in Sisyphus' eventual death. After he died, Sisyphus went to the underworld where he was punished by Hades with an endless task.
The task? Pushing a giant boulder up the hill for all eternity but never being able to reach the top as the boulder inevitably came down. And therefore, the myth of Sisyphus draws a picture of the eternal, and eternally fruitless, toil of a punished man.
Where Do Sisyphus Memes Come From?
While the earliest memes referencing Sisyphus appeared in early 2010s, the myth escaped any significant presence in the zeitgeist until 2021, likely propelled into the public eye by the 2020 video game Hades giving everyone a good refresher on Greek Mythology 101. In mid-2021, Greek Mythology puns briefly achieved popularity on Twitter, with Sisyphus becoming one of the more popular references and even trending on the site.
Sisyphus got even more mainstream attention after in January 2023 a TikToker made a video in which she argued that Sisyphus' eternal punishment could be interpreted as a reward, a point also made in philosopher Camus' essay The Myth of Sisyphys.
Everyone should have to bear the psychic damage I did when I saw this video https://t.co/EELaLfM6Wx pic.twitter.com/TNNDTj0AHV
— Money Doug (@Money__Doug) January 31, 2023
The tweet flung the myth of Sisyphus into more discourse, and more memes were soon to follow.
What Are Those Sisyphys Memes On TikTok?
The 2023 Sisyphus TikTok trend involves TikTokers posting videos of humans, animals and even robots performing tasks that have no definitive end: a baby crawling across a conveyor belt in a supermarket, a man working out on a star stepper, a player pushing a boulder up an endless hill in a Roblox recreation of the myth (yes, that's a real game).
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7256343749473717546
The videos are set to the somber tone of Me and the Birds by Duster, and, more notably, have that one illustration of Sisyphus flashing up on screen as soon as the viewer realizes what is going on.
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7251655449290820890
What Does 'One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy' Mean?
The phrase "One must imagine Sisyphus happy" often goes hand-in-hand with Sisyphus memes online, posted in comment sections and used as a caption. The phrase comes from the very ending of the aforementioned philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, in which he argues that as Sisyphus descends the mountain he acknowledges the futility of his task and the certainty of his fate, accepting the utter absurdity of his situation.
Now, in memes, the phrase bears no specific meaning, it's just a memorable phrase used in a memetic fashion to guide those who might miss out on the reference.
For the full history of Sisyphus memes, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.
