I get it. I'm a dank memer. On social media, I share, reblog, and retweet the most entertaining and most biting memes to my heart's content. But considering the rancid political environment and the ever-increasing presence of technology and the internet in our lives, memes have become cultural signifiers in the past twenty years or so.

Regardless of however much this year's election cycle seems like a joke, some of the more terrifying shades are trivialized by memes on social media. Memes also have the additional effect of further polarizing already impressionable audiences. Take, for example, this creation from Bernie Sanders' Dank Meme Stash:

Comment sections for images like this are often an explosion of conflicting and contrasting ideas. More often than not, people resort to anger and anonymous internet cruelty. One could say that memes open up the floor to political debate, and in certain aspects one would be right. On the other hand, though, images like one have the added effect of making a joke out of a very grim situation.

Even though, you know, Trump's fascistic rhetoric has drawn parallels to Hitler.

One could say that it's our own way of satirizing all the crazy things that are going on. And it's true: some of these images are quite clever, and are indicative that some people are indeed "woke AF." At the same time, however, look at the memetic mutation of the Harambe controversy.

Harambe, as most people know, was an endangered silverback gorilla who was killed in order to protect a child who had gotten into his enclosure. But when many think of Harambe, they don't think "tragedy" or "controversy." They think of the memes, of the "funny."

It's true that one could say that this is our own form of social commentary in a digital age; that jokes are the only way to cope with a world this dark. However, if it's our instinct to make a joke out of a serious situation, then there's definitely a larger problem at hand.