On my Instagram feed, sandwiched between cute reels of sea lions and the multitudes of webcomics I follow, there is a bombardment of bad news. Images of innocent people who have been kidnapped by ICE, videos of families in Gaza pleading for a chance at survival, more and more disgusting behavior from the highest level of our government and, of course, breakdowns of what is contained in the Epstein files. It’s a horrible feeling.

We live in a time of near-pantomime, where satirical publications like the Onion and Reductress are running out of headlines that aren’t just things that are happening in real life. 

It’s no wonder that so many people have turned to jokes and memes in order to cope. It’s incredibly understandable, and I too have partaken in, and enjoyed, jokes about the time we live in. Comedy is a completely valid way to process these things because, if you don’t, it’s so hard not to sink into complete depressive hopelessness.

But some things can’t be joked about, at least not passively. The Epstein files are one of these things. 

Some of the most influential people in the world were a part of a sex trafficking pedophile ring. There are files that talk about Jefferey Epstein watching torture videos, that go into detail about the sexual abuse he and his associates inflicted, and about how he was still reached out to by his peers even after his initial charges of procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute in 2008.

It is truly chilling to read correspondences between Epstein and his peers, where they talk about how excited they were to be on the island with Epstein and the women and children who were being trafficked. There’s references to so many disgusting and terrible acts, and there are so many files that it feels like there is no end in sight to the horror. 

I can only imagine how it must feel for the victims of Jefferey Epstein to see their trauma being flattened into a joke for the algorithm’s pleasure. Too many of these memes exist, to the point where there are distinct genres. One I found is to the song “Where You Are” from Disney’s “Moana”. This is made especially chilling by its ending: a picture of Jeffery Epstein next to three uncensored children, to the lyrics “And when I think of tomorrow/There we are”. It has amassed over 33,000 likes since being posted on Feb. 2 of this year, and is just irreverent enough that it can almost pass as satire.

Many of these memes take a distinctly antisemitic turn. I’ve found several in the same vein, with the punchline amounting to the fact that Epstein was a Jewish man. This focus on his Judaism brings to mind antisemitic conspiracy theories about the elite and ignores the actual problems in plain sight, which is that there is an elite class (of many different religions and ethnicities) who can get away with as much as they’d like while still being protected by the government. 

I believe that the spread of these memes is similar to the memetic warfare of the 2016 election, where there is an inundation of artificial meme culture around the topic of Epstein, to mythologize and defang his image. After all, if the internet is too busy talking about Elon Musk making a fool of himself in the files, or Epstein seemingly being a fan of the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise, we cannot properly discuss the implications of their release. We also are less incentivized to think about the other people who are connected to Epstein’s crimes in a context of justice.

What it does instead is turn Epstein himself into a meme, not a person. He is flattened into a character, something for the internet to laugh at. His crimes no longer become crimes at all, just quirks of this posthumous persona. Jefferey Epstein and his associates become akin to figures like Pepe the frog or Bad Luck Brian. It creates a cognitive dissonance between the seriousness of his crimes and that memetic figure. It’s also rife with misinformation and conspiracy theories, with a common meme being about the conspiracy surrounding Epstein’s 2019 death in prison.

Humor is not the only way to cope with the news cycle. For me, when it all gets too overwhelming, I like to detangle myself from that tantalizing urge to know everything immediately and log off for a bit. Instead of social media, I like to look for information from sites like AP News. I talk about it with friends and family and take breaks from thinking about the news cycle at all. Be conscious of what you’re spreading, and think critically about everything — especially the “funny” stuff.