Absurdism: The Vibe Check of 2025

World War II. Yeah, that was the point when people started to feel out of place and absurd. Writers, poets and philosophers found an interesting raw material to sketch upon. Life felt fragmented due to the loss that the war had dumped upon the people. So, they could think of nothing other than doom. They lost their religious belief along with their sense of self. Writers like Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Eugene Ionesco were all the products of this exhausted period. But wait, is the literature only the mood of that period? Does it not resonate with us, or are we not aware of the state of affairs?

Some of us are well acquainted with their works, taught to us at school or college, to instruct us on the philosophy of Existentialism, while some of us are not. However, what both parties may not have given a thought to is that all of us doom scroll even today in such a Theatre of the Absurd. How? Let me try to answer your existentialism in this blog post. You never know, you may be less lost by the time you reach the end. Or maybe, more. The choice is yours! 

Waitscape Absurdity is the Mood

With the rise in technology, life has not become a tad bit easier, I’d say. Yeah, AI is making a lot of changes to reduce the toiling and moiling of human beings. For example, I recently got to know about the latest feature of Canva Code. Here, the AI feature allows one to create smart designs with just a simple prompt!  Sounds amazing, right? Well, it is! This may be taken as one of the bright sides of today’s Brave New World. 

But then, there always remains the darker side as well. Due to rising technology, there’s a rise in competition as well, and people are spending their time waiting for job callbacks where applications vanish into smoke like cursed emails. On the other hand, people with jobs are not much better off mentally. They got the comfort of instant gratification or instant food, but lost the comfort of interpersonal relationships like everybody else in this simulated world. 

Here, people in their busy schedules turn to their mobile phones for assistance instead of building valuable relationships with people. Yet, they wait for affection in their lives. Ironic, isn’t it? Beckett foresaw such a doom in the 20th century. Like Vladimir and Estragon, we all keep waiting for a meaning in our lives, yet that meaning never arrives, leaving us in an absurd situation. 

This reminds me of the confusing situation of Vladimir and Estragon towards the play’s end. Estragon asks Vladimir whether they should “go” with Vladimir, like a normal person agreeing, yet they do not move. Well, their wait is not much different from ours.

Born to Scroll, Forced to Find Meaning!

Talking about today’s world, but not talking about meme culture as an absurd twist is wild. The absurdist precursors skimmed their lives cracking absurd, flippant jokes like Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. But wait, Generation Z comes closest to emulating them. If you ask in what way? Well, it’s none other than scrolling through memes! This is the generation that “tries” to shield itself from emotional turmoil by making a joke out of every serious thing! Because they are forced to find meaning in an existential world, they rather tend to be delusional. Well, this is not something solely from my viewpoint. If you look around yourself, you will know. 

Unlike the post-World War II characters who accept their doomed Sisyphean fate without having a tool to express sarcasm towards life, Gen Z express it through technology! In today’s era of the internet, the moment we open our social media, we are bombarded with memes ranging from academia to everyday issues. Gen Z take the existential angst of the precursors to a new, quirky level.

 Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus’s academic phrase of “void” is given a twist with “nothing matters.” It’s like Sisyphus upgrading himself to the 21st century! This generation, with their mix of maturity and silliness, puts upfront for us the premium version of absurdity. 

Well, we have taken things so far as to dark humour where nothing serious really matters, and even the misfortune seems like a gala time. Their sense of absurdity becomes interesting for the boomers and millennials as well, where these days they too step into the zone of Gen Z on Instagram to find laughter in absurdity! After all, life is not so serious. Is it? 

Brain-Rot, a Twist to Pinteresque Absurdism

Well, Pinter saw this coming in the 1950s! Pinter makes use of several pauses, repetitions and “senseless” phrases to intensify the layer of absurdity and meaninglessness in conversations. Words lose their meaning, and they fail to signify anything that makes sense to us in typical terms. But how is it relevant in today’s generation or world? I’d say, brain rot. This term is definitely not new and was first noticed in Thoreau’s book, Walden. 

The term takes a new twist in today’s generation, where Gen Z and Gen Alpha, especially inspired by memes, make use of nonsensical language to converse! I have seen so many videos on social media where such brain-rot language fails to convey words. These are phrases grammatically incorrect, defying usual connotations. Memes, or brain rot language, prove to be a great shield against the conventional modes of lifestyle and the sense of void in life. 

But they are something that show the deprecating state of human life, where value is missing. Both Pinteresque language and brain rot language fail to convey anything serious. All they relay is the absurdity of life that lacks any sense. Modernism has expanded its ways in quirky modes, and brain rot becomes a segment of it. 

 So, I realised some days ago that Pinter’s English “why did the chicken cross the road” becomes as senseless as “Fanum Tax” and “Sigma.” Language, in whatever form, in the modern times of fragmentation, whether during the Absurdist movement or in this contemporary period, makes no sense!

Plot? What’s that?

One thing that we have at the heart’s core is a plotless life. This is something that we have got from our Absurdist philosophers’ rendering of their lives’ structure! Life has no structured meaning, as our good old Aristotle states. Instead,  in the terms of Eliot,  it’s a “heap of broken images.” The devastation of the Second World War left the generation of the 1940s with a life that had no sequence. 

Similarly,  this generation that you and I call our own has no plot. With thousands of deadlines pending in the digital era,  with even more distractions,  we can hardly make a life that goes according to our will! Just today,  I thought I would wake up at six,  do yoga and then complete my day with a routine study. 

But guess what? I did none. Why? Because life is absurd and you never know what’s to come next. Instead,  I am writing an article right now. Modern life is unexpected, and my example is but a metaphor! 

Just like Franz Kafka’s The Trial, where the protagonist is arrested by mysterious authorities, never knowing what he’s accused of, we never know what life has in store for us! Whether there’s some sort of resolution or not becomes something beyond our understanding.

Let’s Conclude

Camus states in his The Myth of Sisyphus about the ultimate power move that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.” His actions are usually viewed from a pessimistic opinion, doing the same mundane job every day. But what grabs my attention is that he does not stop. He, for me, seems to be vibing on his way back down the hill, getting ready to push back the rock. 

So yeah, all the points listed above that relate Absurdism to our contemporary time become less stressful if we accept “it is what it is.” We just need to get used to the absurdist vibe, building Pinterest boards for a future we do not know exists! I am sure if Sisyphus had an Instagram account, he would have put a lo-fi beat as a background to his posts, and so should we!

ABOUT THE BLOGGER

Sunanda Basu

Sunanda Basu is a literary enthusiast completing her post-graduation in English Literature from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata. She received a Bachelor’s degree in the same from Loreto College, Kolkata. With her interest in Gender Studies, she enjoys her role as an avid researcher, presenting papers at conferences and publishing them whenever the opportunity arises. Three of her research works have been published in international journals, namely Research Ethics, International Journal of English and Studies (IJOES), and Research and Criticism by BHU. She is also a published author for anthologies like Exceller Book’s An Adventure Called Life, and Writer’s Pocket’s Sunshine Between the Lines. She takes an interest in publishing short online articles. One such article has been published in a student magazine called Monograph. Along with research, she also enjoys writing content on health and travel. She believes in the mantra of going with the flow of life, recording everything big and small in her journal.