Memefests may be fun but it's about time we had restraints

Social media users and platforms need to consider the harm done

- JESSICA KARL

Every now and then, 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 became 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 cat-fished. 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 and started making daily demands of the government, drawing media attention and becoming a local celebrity.