World War Meme: American teens are unaware of consequences Iranians face from Soleimani airstrike

On the Internet, anything can be turned into a joke. So when the first major news story of 2020 broke, it wasn’t shocking to see severity met with sarcasm. 

Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian major general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed in an airstrike by American forces on Jan. 3. After receiving backlash for the seemingly unprompted attack, several defensive statements were made by President Donald Trump, who authorized the attack without consulting Congress. While some have quickly labeled Trump’s actions as a one-and-done incident, others fear for the worst: World War III.

But amidst the news blasts and CNN updates, American teenagers responded to the idea of war in a somewhat unsurprising way — through memes. 

Within hours of Soleimani’s death, American teenagers — equipped only with the limited news from their Twitter feeds — flooded every social media platform with memes dripping in sarcasm and apathy. One Twitter user, @ImToresea, wrote “dudes be worried about an open window letting cold air in.. fam you’re focused on the wrong draft… #WW3.”

The biggest source of meme fuel? A hypothetical military draft. Unlike adults who asked themselves whether the war itself would even happen upon receiving the news, teenagers immediately took to TikTok to joke about becoming doting army wives or “swapping genders” to avoid being drafted — even though the practice has been largely abolished and the likelihood of the draft’s reinstatement is low. 

For a majority of teenagers contributing to the jokes, their formative years have been spent debating whether guns should be put into the hands of citizens and what can be done about the eruption of fires around the world that result from climate change. Given this, the fear teenagers experience when confronted with the idea of being forced to carry a gun and light cities on fire with bombs isn’t coming out of left field. 

In fact, it’s this fear that acts as most teenagers’ rationale for the memes. Youth in major cities on the East Coast fear for their safety as threats of retaliation bombs litter Reddit. Young girls discuss whether or not they’re equipped to fight across seas. High schoolers with depression and anxiety Google search for whether or not mental health issues disqualify one from being drafted. 

These fears are valid. We’re young and naïve. We’ve lived in a world dominated by the complete opposite of feel-good news for as long as we can remember — we’ve learned to expect the worst. And we can’t help it. 

But what most teens — the ones who text funny TikToks to their friends and joke about wearing tube tops and camo joggers on the battlefield — haven’t realized is that for the citizens of Iran, the crisis we fear is their reality. 

Since mid-Nov. of 2019, Iranian citizens across the country have been protesting against their government due to increasing fuel prices, government corruption and opposition to the Islamic Republic. The protests began as peaceful demonstrations and quickly turned violent as the government met the protesters with harsh resistance.     

The Iranian government has used a series of tactics to deter the protesters, such as shutting down the nation’s internet and shooting and killing protestors with machine guns. Families are warned to not hold funerals. Banks, shops and other buildings are being destroyed. Trump’s Congressionally-unauthorized Soleimani strike only made matters worse. American teens are treating the issue like sheer entertainment, nothing more — but it is. 

In America, we may not be suffering through any physical consequences from Trump’s actions, but innocent men, women and children in Iran are having their lives interrupted by the fuel Soleimani’s death added to the already devastating fire of Iran’s civil unrest. For as much as WWIII memes are being spread around the Internet, we should be putting equal attention to Iranians who are losing their homes and families as a result of American interference. 

Thinking about the turmoil across the Atlantic isn’t easy to stomach, but being aware of the situation in Iran does two favors — it allows anxious teens to get a better sense of what to expect in the future and keeps those who consume WWIII memes from being insensitive on the subject.

The uncomfortable truth is that as teens in America, we sip ignorance-is-bliss juice until the concept of conflict is out of our brains, leaving us free to continue going about our lives as we please. Right now, those in Iran don’t get that choice. 

Despite how insignificant it may seem, there’s a small sense of comfort for Americans in retweets, likes and the embrace of a generationally-shared concern for their lives being interrupted by warfare. We haven’t spent our entire lives prepping for SATs and college applications just to be forced into combat before we reach the finish line to adulthood. 

The jump-the-gun meme response isn’t an outlier from the behavior of a typical teen, either. We hold peace signs up to the mirror after we’ve cried our eyes out and laugh at ourselves. Most cringe at how cliché it is to be told that laughter is the best medicine, but comedy — and the community that comes from sharing it — is comforting. 

There’s nothing wrong with laughing at the TikTok your friend texted you of someone doing the “Renegade” dance on a green-screen image of a battlefield. But it’s important to remember there’s a certain privilege that comes with being protected from the very real conflict in Iran. While Americans have the luxury of finding entertainment in the situation, Iranians are suffering — at our hands, too.