SUSANNA PIOMBO
Post-Ironic Aesthetics of the Apocalypse: From Christian Imaginaries to Digital Meme Culture
Every known culture has constructed an apocalyptic imaginary, and every religion includes an end-of-the-world scenario. The human impulse to envision the end is rooted in the awareness of our mortality. However, apocalyptic imaginaries evolve with the social transformations, reflecting the core anxieties and symbolic frameworks of their times. This paper aims to investigate how the aesthetic of apocalypse in Western countries has changed in recent years, through the modification of apocalyptic narratives emerging from social memes. "Gen Z is so unserious", "Gen Z is only afraid of job and pregnancies", "Historians will skip our generation" are some of the trending comments under videos of people facing catastrophes (both climatic and geopolitical) with irony and a cynical serenity. "When you are struggling with your excel file but see a nuclear mushroom cloud out the window" and a large smile of relief appears on the face of the creator, with the song "Happy Xmas (War is Over) " by John Lennon in the background. These are not signs of disengagement, but collective coping mechanisms of the new generations, an integral part of a new "post-ironic aesthetic" that welcomes tragedy and makes it viral. Three interwoven dynamics are central to this transformation: a) TikTok and the irony saturation; b) trauma normalization in the social narrative; c) the experience of crisis not as an exception, but as an ongoing condition. These factors will be examined in relation to cultural and aesthetic frameworks, showing how the contemporary representation of the apocalypse reveals not just a stylistic shift, but a deeper transformation in the way societies process fear, anxiety and meaning in the digital age.