Those memes of an American woman in Pakistan? Not funny

By Jessica Karl

Every once in a while, a jaw-dropping story takes TikTok by storm and morphs into a meme. This week, it was the tale of 33-year-old New Yorker Onijah Andrew Robinson, who flew to Karachi, Pakistan to be with Nidal Ahmed Memon, a 19-year-old man she reportedly met online.

It’s become a viral sensation that offers an unfortunate and familiar lesson. When properly crafted, memes are one of the high forms of modern humor. When steeped in cruelty, they’re a reminder that they also need guardrails. There’s often a fine line between hopping on a harmless trend and exploitation. And in an era when images and soundbites can become untethered from whatever inspired them, creators and companies should prioritize meme literacy, and social media outlets should help provide more context.

Robinson’s purported saga varies slightly depending on which creator is recapping it. As with everything on social media, you have to take what you hear with heaps of salt. But the bare bones of it seem to be that upon her arrival, Memon realized he had been catfished. He told her that his family opposed a marriage and encouraged her to leave. Instead of heading back to the US when her visa expired, Robinson stayed in Karachi and started making daily demands of the government, drawing the attention of dozens of media reporters and becoming a local celebrity.

In the midst of it all, a man claiming to be Robinson’s son told a local news outlet that she has a history of mental illness. A local news report said she was admitted to a Pakistani hospital, where she was seen by psychiatrists. That didn’t stop creators from openly mocking her appearance and sharing her soundbites out of context. Some suggested TLC producers should get her on the network’s hit show 90 Day Fiancé.

While I’m all for enjoying a viral moment, the ubiquity of her story on social media illustrates meme culture’s pitfalls. So, at the risk of sounding like the “No Fun Police,” I have to ask: Will social media users ever take a step back and realize that some memes — especially those rooted in tragedy or cruelty — aren’t actually funny at all?

During what appeared to be an impromptu press conference alongside Pakistani social worker Ramzan Chhipa, Robinson told swaths of newscasters that she wants to overhaul Pakistan’s infrastructure: “I’m asking for $100K or more. I need $20K by this week, in my pockets, in cash.” In another interview, she told newscasters, “I’m not talking unless y’all giving me land and $2,000 or more every week. You hear me?”

Those became tempting messages to co-opt. Thousands of people are now using Robinson’s voice on videos about everything from grandkids to brand deals. The incentive for some is clear. The chief metric of digital success is how many eyeballs land on a post and engaging with a viral moment helps influencers ride the zeitgeist. But by exploiting a viral moment, creators — and sometimes even businesses — may forget to consider whether a trend is truly aligned with their brand. A simple way to avoid that trap is to be cautious and do a little research prior to posting.

Ideally, it’s a step that would happen during the early stages of a meme’s rise, when there’s time to read up on the origin story of a trend before jumping on the bandwagon. Several influencers recently had to issue an apology after joining a racist trend that repurposed footage of an Indigenous Australian man to “prank call” their friends and family members.

Social platforms that house this content have a role to play too, particularly when they make it easier for users to edit and share images and sounds. For example, CapCut — the ByteDance-owned video editing service — already offers multiple templates of Robinson’s face and voice. TikTok has, in the past, banned overtly harmful trends like “legging legs,” but Robinson’s story is murkier territory. Mental health concerns are present, but because there are no allusions to self-harm or body image issues, alarm bells don’t automatically ring. At the same time, there’s been some genuine cultural exchange happening between Pakistanis and Americans because of the story.

Still, memes have often gone too far. What’s stopping TikTok and CapCut from placing a short explainer on videos telling people where a sensitive viral sound or filter has come from? The added context could remind creators of the meme’s origin and might lead them to second-guess using it carelessly.

You may not remember or know that the “absolute unit” meme was a post poking fun at an overweight British man. Or that the “my Shayla” soundbite was about Tyrese Gibson’s 2017 custody battle for his then-10-year-old daughter. Or that the photo of George Bush getting something whispered in his ear — used to make fun of everything from Temu to John Mayer — is actually about 9/11. Years from now, people may not even know or remember that Selena Gomez was crying in an Instagram video about President Donald Trump’s border crackdown. Mere days after the since-deleted video was posted, it was already being used as a soundbite about a clogged toilet.

The year is just getting started, and there will be many more trending moments to come, so a little mindfulness could go a long way in ensuring that virality doesn’t come with greater and more damaging costs.