The internet is terrible at normalizing extremely self-deprecating jokes and any type of depression joke. When you criticize them people are quick to call them coping mechanisms, without stopping to think if they are a healthy one or not.

I find myself making them, I made one a week or two ago on Twitter, I liked one on Tumblr two days ago. I’m as guilty as anyone. The thing is, I’m not depressed and haven’t been for a long while. They aren’t a coping mechanism for me, they’re just ingrained in my mind as normal humor and I find myself saying them both out loud and mentally.

It’s not healthy to have the voice in the back of your head scream “this is why you’re going to die alone” when you something annoying. It’s not healthy to have it say “I want to jump off a building” when you embarrass yourself.

You say it with an edge in your voice and everyone laughs, but then you find yourself thinking it when you’re even slightly sad and all of a sudden you think. Yeah, it is why I’m going to die alone.

Self-deprecating jokes are fine at a surface level. It’s good to be able to laugh at yourself, it keeps you from taking everything so seriously, but I keep seeing the jokes getting more and more extreme. I think the internet is to blame, the bigger you go the funnier it is, just ask your retweet ratio. I don’t hear the jokes as often when I’m hanging around adults, but when I’m around teenagers its another story. The younger generations (and me lets be real) spend a ton of time online and this “sense of humor” breeds here.

If I had really been exposed to this mindset when I was struggling so bad with my mental health in middle school it could have gotten dangerous fast, but even now I find it concerning how often these jokes circle in my brain.