{"id":493887,"date":"2026-05-20T09:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T09:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/493887\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T09:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T09:36:11","slug":"sean-moncrieff-if-youre-not-part-of-a-whatsapp-group-you-are-a-failure-as-a-human-being-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/493887\/","title":{"rendered":"Se\u00e1n Moncrieff: If you\u2019re not part of a WhatsApp group, you are a failure as a human being \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It could be that we live in age when, if you\u2019re not part of a WhatsApp<\/a> group, you are a failure as a human being. Actually, phrasing that in the singular is incorrect: being in just one WhatsApp group is equally sad. You\u2019re probably only in it because all the others know about your friendless status and feel sorry for you. Or you\u2019re in a WhatsApp group for people who aren\u2019t in any WhatsApp groups. <\/p>\n

But it\u2019s generally true that most people are in many, and for different purposes. Based on my experience, there are groups for family, subsections of family, differing friend groups, colleagues, other colleagues who want to bitch about the colleagues in the first group, neighbours, other neighbours who want to bitch about the neighbours in the first group, sports clubs and mams in the school. <\/p>\n

As far as I know, there\u2019s never dads in the school group. That\u2019s because of the patriarchy. <\/p>\n

A lot of the groups also feel the need to have droll names. Myself and Herself<\/a> are in a group with Daughter Number One and Future Son-in-law, set up when they were living with us and searching for a place to live. It\u2019s called Housing Crisis<\/a>. I\u2019m in a group called Meeting Up Before We Die (so far, we have done neither) and another called Moncrieff Bitches. I didn\u2019t choose the name and it\u2019s not what you think. Probably. <\/p>\n

Some of these groups are for gossiping, or the exchange of functional information. (Are you home for dinner? Do you have anything for a coloured wash?) But invariably, WhatsApp groups are also used to disseminate memes. <\/p>\n

The meme-industrial complex has swollen dramatically in the last decade or so: partially as a business for vomit-inducing \u201cinspirational\u201d quotes, but mostly as an artisan endeavour. With even the most basic software anyone can knock out a humorously reworked movie poster or a misappropriated George Orwell quote.<\/p>\n

Usually, the aim is to make a joke or an insightful comment on the times we live in, or both. The vast majority are rubbish, which is oddly comforting: for the most part, memes come from the minds of real people rather than bots or billion-dollar corporations pretending to be people. They are not created for financial gain, but for fun. That, and the possibility of the modern beatification process known as Going Viral.<\/p>\n

The arrival of AI, of course, has transformed meme-making into something that was unimaginable even five years ago. Nearly every day, there\u2019s a new mini-movie with Donald Trump<\/a> dancing or fighting or snogging the face off Binyamin Netanyahu<\/a>. (Which is as disturbing as it sounds.) And since the start of the war on Iran<\/a>, even the hideous regime there \u2013 normally opposed to anything like fun \u2013 has been commissioning a series of slick Lego-style videos excoriating Trump. (The BBC interviewed one of the video producers, who wanted to remain anonymous and insisted on being called Mister Explosive: making him sound like a character from the bawdy comic Viz.)<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Se\u00e1n Moncrieff: Irish weddings can be quite un-IrishOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

But as the aforementioned George Orwell wrote, (though he wasn\u2019t the first to express the idea) all art is propaganda: blatantly so in the case of the Iran videos. <\/p>\n

Call me a Pollyanna, but my sense is that the vast majority of people know this, all the while sharing the videos online or in WhatsApp groups. And not because they are fans of murderous theocracies: just that, in a small way, it gets one over on Trump. And the motivations are similar for most politically-themed memes. <\/p>\n

No one thinks it will change anyone\u2019s mind, or that posting a funny picture will alter anything in the real world. It\u2019s more a poignant form of relief. At least we can do this; we can laugh about how grimly insane the world seems to have become. There\u2019s little else we can do. Just watch it burn and hope for the best. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It could be that we live in age when, if you\u2019re not part of a WhatsApp group, you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[289,6222,356,18,117,19099,8752,19,18929,17,63970,4635],"class_list":["post-493887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-binyamin-netanyahu","tag-donald-trump","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-george-orwell","tag-housing-crisis","tag-ie","tag-iran","tag-ireland","tag-sean-moncrieff","tag-whatsapp"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116606231200926418","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}