Benjamin Nickl, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Culture, Literature and Translation, University of Sydney
Why do so many of the funniest things on social media make no sense at all?
How about Ashby’s stunt scenes for a back brace infomercial on a white swivel chair, overlaid with Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat Major – or her improvisations as The Lorax; a sequence of HOW I LOOK: #brainrot memes; or a congregation of cats lip-syncing the national anthem. These short, sharp jolts of what some may label “nonsense” dominate feeds worldwide.
This is absurdist humour.
It doesn’t build slowly like a sitcom, or unfurl as witty repartee in a novel. It doesn’t explain itself like a stand-up routine. Instead, it hits fast, surprises us, and vanishes.
Why absurd works so well on TikTok
Absurdism, as a formalised concept and distinct aesthetic, has its roots in the 20th century. It draws on ideas of people like French-Algerian writer Albert Camus and his philosophy of life’s absurdity, which plays on the clash between our search for meaning and the universe’s randomness.
Thriving on illogical situations and exaggerated contradictions, this philosophy of the absurd translates naturally to the chaotic, fast-paced world of social media apps like TikTok. Clips are short, often under a minute, and some users swipe through hundreds in a sitting.
A long joke risks losing attention in this space, whereas absurdism needs only a flash of the unexpected: a sudden twist, a visual quirk, an audio gag, or another odd mismatch … say, an impassioned 80s culture collage. That burst of surprise is key.
Psychologist Tania Luna calls surprise an “emotion intensifier” – a digital upper for brain stimuli. It can make any emotion, from laughter to fear, feel up to 400% stronger. A TikTok is funnier not just because it’s absurd, but because it’s unexpected.
In other words, receiving a gift on your birthday is nice; but getting one on a random Tuesday is something else.
The role of the algorithm
TikTok’s For You page is that random Tuesday. The algorithm pushes videos most likely to seed reactions. If you laugh and “heart”, or even multi-heart something, TikTok spreads it further.
This feedback loop amplifies content that delivers surprise. Absurdist humour, with its quick twists and odd turns, suits this system perfectly.
Meanwhile, TikTok makes remixing easier than ever. Users can take a video and layer lip-syncs, voice-overs, glitch edits or filters. A straight-faced cooking clip might morph into surreal comedy with only a few tweaks.
In this way, TikTok doesn’t just reward absurdism – it actively encourages it.
Absurdism across cultures
Absurd humour isn’t new.
German sketch TV popularised nonsense decades ago, with Hitler spoofs and Führer skits. Japanese television embraced the surreal with slapstick game shows, bashing participants across soundstages since the 1980s. In post-Soviet countries, absurdist doomer memes mix politics and everyday life into carnivals of strangeness, heightened since the war in Ukraine.
What TikTok does is make these styles visible across borders. What’s funny in one culture might seem baffling in another, but remixing lets jokes travel.
A teenager in Sydney might laugh at a Home and Away parody from Seoul, add their own spin, and send it back into circulation. Now AI-generated absurdism is spreading too, with bots locked in a race to out-absurd one another globally.
Digital jazz and online busking
None of this is entirely novel. Absurdist humour’s spread online resembles older art forms built on recycling content.
Think of jazz: improvisational musicians once twisted a theme differently every night. TikTok users do the same with sound clips, visual gags or dance moves – variations on a theme.
Street buskers play to passers-by, hoping to catch attention for a few moments, or millions if their recorded covers or rejigged songs go viral. TikTok comedians throw improvised clips into a digital crowd. If they land, people stop, watch, like and share.
The app is both stage and instrument, letting creators jam with unpredictable audiences in real time.
What absurdist humour says about us
So, what does all this nonsense mean?
One answer is that it reflects how technology shapes our fun. Phones track us, logging our behaviour, anticipating what we’ll like. Many users, especially Gen Z, respond by “playing the algorithm”, making chaotic, unpredictable content that resists neat categorisation.
Absurdist humour thrives in this environment: its randomness makes it harder to slot into patterns, while also boosting visibility. That’s why absurd memes are both entertainment and a playful tactic against the feed.
It also marks a shift in our entertainment needs. Most platforms of the 2010s aimed to capture attention; in the 2020s, they try to jolt it. Absurdist comedy doesn’t hold us long, but it’s sometimes a scroll stopper.
Navigating information overload takes a toll, so absurdist TikToks may be training us for a state of hyperavailability known to give us “online brain”. The sheer volume of these clips suggests coherence is optional, maybe obsolete, and surprise is the new aim.
Earlier artists of the absurd saw humour as cognitive aerobics. They wanted to keep minds stretchy, bendy and enthusiastically pliant while making sense of nonsense. Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein revelled in unruly form, inspired by early Disney animation. Salvador Dali melted clocks against standard time to push psycho-social agility.
To some, absurdist humour might make no sense. But to many today, it makes perfect sense.
Benjamin Nickl does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
