Cringe-stagrams

There are three basic life principles that we know to be true:

1) Eating after 9 PM is not a good idea.

2) The best way to break up is to do it in person, while keeping in mind that…

3) …when it comes to personal matters, they should be kept relatively private.

And yet:

1) Food tastes better after 10 PM.

2) Breaking up in person can seem dramatic if not borderline psychotic when you’ve only been hooking up for two weeks.

3) And besides, we live our lives on social media. Hardly anything is private.

The latter is how Instagram accounts like Texts From Your Ex, Tinder Nightmares, and We Should Break Up: the newest name in screenshots-made-public, not only exist, but proliferate. They’re amusing because they range from that which hits close to home to that which you have to share and even to what has to be fake, and probably exists only for the sake of getting published.

The truth is funny; funny is funny; and slapstick remains the most universally appealing form of comedy.

But in the 2015, comebacks from the satisfying to the bizarre are our version of Charlie Chaplin’s banana peel.

Like an excruciating sex scene on Girls, many of these accounts remind us that whatever our reality, it’s probably better than what’s being portrayed on solely for the sake of entertainment. But is it cheap humor?

It starts out innocently. Your friend tags you on a few breakup texts that you just “have to see.” You laugh, maybe tag a few other friends, and then consider writing about this “new Instagram to follow” for the blog that hires you to write.

Then, just as you’re amassing various screen shots to attach in a slideshow (Hahaha, look at this weird one) it starts to dawn on you that someone — possibly — actually got broken up with this way. That there’s someone out there looking at her phone going, “Did you just end our two week happy hook up with a pile of hot dogs and a fucking cat?”

Does that make it okay to participate? Do we all just accept that our interactions have the potential to become prime Internet clickbait? Should we therefore relish in the jokes that, as of yet, aren’t in our own hands?

If we don’t — if our consciences kicks in and can’t take the punchline (it’s just a joke!) because of whatever guilt we’re harboring, what’s an acceptable response when our friends wants to know why we didn’t think the Instagram was totally hilarious?

“I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me“?

Maybe. Or maybe I should just lighten up.