On social media, everything from Lady Gaga to knee-high Converse sneakers is a ‘recession indicator’

Lady Gaga poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere for the film 'Joker: Folie A Deux' on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

If you believe social media, signs of an impending recession are everywhere.

Lady Gaga back on the charts? That’s a recession indicator. Coupons and canned good displays at grocery stores? Definitely recession indicators. And the return of knee-high Converse sneakers? Possibly the most obvious recession indicator of them all.

Any societal shift that either evokes the Great Recession or signifies an effort to save or make extra money is a potential recession indicator — according to the internet anyway.

We aren’t actually in a recession, at least not yet. But that distinction isn’t really the point.

These tongue-in-cheek observations suggest that the vibes are off. And faced with a worsening economy, a trade war and rising recession odds, social media users can’t help but send memes into the void while laughing nervously.

Underneath these jokes is a very real anxiety. And that anxiety tells us a lot — both about how we depend on humor and where the economy could actually go.

Humour helps people cope

A recession would wreak havoc on the economy, causing potential mass layoffs as businesses cut back and a decline in the stock market. Between 2007 and 2011, more than half of American families lost at least a quarter of their wealth due to the Great Recession. Today, amid an erratic trade war, consumer confidence is at its lowest since May 2020.

None of that is funny. But the internet can’t help it — the memes are ubiquitous. Facing one of the worst financial crises in almost two decades, all anyone on social media can seemingly do is laugh.

This isn’t the first time jokes have materialized online in the wake of a serious news event. Last year, memes about the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson flooded social timelines, as users aired their gripes about health insurance (“Thoughts and prayers are out of network,” went one popular quip). More recently, in the midst of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, immigrants have joked on TikTok about self-deporting.

In the midst of upheaval, suddenly everyone’s a comedian. Phrases like “all you can do is laugh” or “laughter is the best medicine” underscore our longstanding tendencies to turn to laughter when faced with dire situations, said Dustin Kidd, professor of sociology at Temple University.

“The more serious things get, the more we rely on humor as a way to cope with them,” Kidd said.

Thanks to television, humor has become a key ritual in how we cope with circumstances, he said. Sketch comedy shows like the “The Carol Burnett Show” and “Saturday Night Live” gave comedy a national audience, with the latter specifically poking fun at politicians and political ramifications to this day.

Similarly, the sitcom “Maude,” which ran for six seasons in the 1970s, gave Americans a way to think through difficult feminist questions, Kidd said, most controversially depicting the titular Maude deciding to have an abortion two months before the Roe v. Wade decision.

“TV and other forms of popular culture, including social media, are often misperceived as escapism,” Kidd said. “On the contrary, when we are confronted with tough issues, jokes and entertainment are useful ways to tease out and answer the hard questions.”

But many still feel powerless against economic woes, Kidd said, which is why they may turn to humor rather than a more active, problem-solving solution.

You might be concerned about sudden drains in your 401(k) — like Kidd said he is — and recognize that potential tariffs may be part of the problem. But can you actually stop the tariffs? Probably not, Kidd said.

“I have written all of my representatives about how my retirement savings are being impacted. But apart from sending those emails, I feel like I’m stuck,” he said. “I don’t know how to fix this thing that’s hurting my life so much. So then I end up turning to jokes.”

People want levity in this moment, Kidd explained. These collective recession indicator jokes provide that, at least for the 30 seconds it takes to watch a TikTok.

Recession indicator memes could have real world implications

Humor also abounded in the midst of the Great Recession, but the jokes took on different shapes. “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart famously debated CNBC’s Jim Cramer — a peak example of satire and humor crashing with real financial commentating.

Elsewhere on late night, Jay Leno of “The Tonight Show” made more than 850 jokes in eight months about the meltdown in his monologues, according to an Associated Press report. (“So bad that on ‘Sesame Street,’ they won’t even talk about the letters A, I or G anymore,” went one line.) Primetime sitcoms also incorporated the collapse into their shows — in one episode of “The Office,” airing in October 2007, Michael Scott tries to declare bankruptcy by literally walking into the office and shouting, “I declare bankruptcy!”

What’s new now is the current social media landscape, which has essentially mass marketed these jokes and made them accessible to everyone, all the time. By simply being online, you are likely engaging in these jokes whether you want to or not. You see them on TikTok, you might send one to a friend, and later you might even reference it in a real conversation. And so the cycle turns — rather than grappling with the hard questions of living, it all becomes a meme.

In the case of the economy, it could turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, Kidd said. When people joke about feeling negatively about the economy, it could cause others to feel the same way. That would mean more people pulling back from the market — inching us ever closer to an economic slump.

This pulling back is illustrated by other, non-joke economic indicators too. The men’s underwear index, coined by economist Alan Greenspan, posits that men will hold back on buying underwear when they think the economy will go down and buy it again as the economy stabilizes — metrics that proved to be true back in 2007 to 2009.

“Memes are just testing out ideas mostly,” said Kyla Scanlon, author of “In This Economy? How Money and Markets Really Work.”

It’s like sending a smoke signal, she explained. They ask, “Hello? Is everyone else okay?” The echo-ing “no” comes as a relief — they’re not alone in their stress, or their preparatory instincts.

Onlookers have noted for years that the lines between sincerity and irony are blurring. In today’s social media-obsessed world, the meme-ification machine works around the clock. As worries mount — AI making jobs obsolete, the continuing climate crisis, inability to own a home, etc. — it all becomes too much to bear. And when people have given up, Scanlon said, everything becomes a joke.

“I think a lot of people are like, ‘Nothing matters anymore,’” she said. “And it’s just sad.”

Some are taking a more serious approach to the possibility of recession. Millennials who lived through the 2008 crash have begun giving younger people advice both online and in real life. Others are posting videos about how to recession-proof your life, from starting a garden to cheap meal ideas — all in varying degrees of jest.

Not everyone has given up, then, but the ubiquity of these indicator memes underscore how hard it is to not give in, at least a little, to a feeling of catastrophe. Jokes, at least temporarily, are our national reprieve.

Leah Asmelash, CNN