Why Does Everyone Think Greta is Just Showing Off?

As war rages, sarcasm and dark humor flood social media. Joel Halldorf notes how this creates distance instead of action.

COMMENTARY. A few days after the US bombed Iran, my 15-year-old daughter shows me her social media feeds.

“I am going to my first World War III – does anyone know the dress code?”

“Seems like we’re not even getting GTA6…”

And so it continues, in a steady stream of memes, jokes, and viral videos.

It's easy to be frustrated by the lighthearted tone in the face of tragedy, but irony is a disguise for despair. This is a generation that has grown up in a world where crises follow one another: climate threats, economic collapse, pandemic, and now war.

Dark humor is a coping strategy. Social media hasn't created it; it's a universal human reaction.

Sarcasm becomes a secular serenity prayer: a way to handle what one cannot control. But social media simultaneously amplifies the sense of distance that dark humor thrives on.

Once, we believed it would be different. In 2009, the Green Revolution in Iran raised hopes about social media's ability to undermine dictatorships. But the same tools gave the regime unprecedented opportunities for control and surveillance.

But the biggest problem is not just that power uses technology better than activists, but how social media shapes our relationships.

But social media rarely creates strong bonds.

Historically, political mass movements have been built on people getting to know each other in small cells: associations, unions, and congregations. Thanks to strong bonds, members have been willing to invest and take risks together in their political struggle.

But social media rarely creates strong bonds. They give us broad networks with thin ties. Therefore, they undermine rather than strengthen political activism.

This is the problem for Generation Z, and many others: we scroll instead of organizing. It leaves us standing at a distance, not only from events but also from each other, as we watch a burning world.

When someone challenges this pattern – like Greta Thunberg, whose commitment led her to take a boat to Gaza – she is accused of performative virtue signaling: showing off to win likes.

She breaks our time's foremost social contract: that sarcasm is the only accepted reaction when the world is on fire.

That attitude locks us into the political situation that sparked our despair in the first place.

Is there a meme for that?

Joel Halldorf is a professor of church history at Enskilda Högskolan Stockholm and a contributor to Expressen's culture page.