Playing Dead: TikTok, #Darkhumor Memes, and the Absurdity of School Shootings in the United States

This article theorizes the playful memetic body—the embodied, iterative performance through which memes convey meaning—to analyze how Gen Z uses TikTok dark humor memes to navigate school shootings as generational trauma. Based on 280 videos (2019–2023), it examines how youths perform coping, critique, and parody through memetic formats shaped by TikTok’s platform vernacular. These performances transform trauma into stylized play, using repetition, irony, and gestures to mock institutional failure and render fear temporarily manageable. Memes such as the evolving “quiet kid” trope reframe school safety through narratives of self-reliance, reinforcing the burden of individual survival. Rather than depicting trauma directly, these videos use stylized performance and genre conventions to process fear, frustration, and critique through platform logics. By centering the playful memetic body as a site of production, this study shows how young people use humor, imitation, and performance to collectively process violence, critique failed systems, and assert agency through shared sensibilities.