Humor is subjective, some people might find something funny while others might not. There are things that are funny, but don’t hurt people like harmless pranks – pies in the face, dad jokes, and there are things that are funny but embarrass or humiliate people like making fun when someone slips, when someone gets made fun of for something they are doing, it’s funny but it also could hurt the person’s feelings.

A lot of people like the new TikTok trend of making Instagram accounts to take pictures of people sleeping in class. These things are supposed to be funny because of the way a picture is taken, someone falls asleep in class because they might be tired, had not gotten any sleep, or simply it’s just boring and someone takes a picture and submits it to the account which then gets posted and people can tag them and comment.

This trend, just like others, has circled around Alisal, and there are now multiple pages on Instagram of people sleeping in class.

Things like this are funny to most people, until they appear on the page. You could say this is harmless because it’s not physically hurting anyone, although sometimes people are being tagged which could bring attention to the person in the photo. And since the internet lives forever, that means that no matter if people take the pictures down they will still be somewhere online, being screenshotted by someone and kept for their enjoyment. 

My friends and I participated in the trend at first as we thought it was a funny thing by just taking pictures of us sleeping in class, which was hilarious and didn’t seem to bother people. 

Since then the trend has expanded to unflattering off guard pictures of people eating, and even people in the bathroom. This just gives an opening for people to think it’s okay to invade someone’s privacy, because how far will it go? This gives people the chance to laugh at someone and not laugh with them.

American humorist Will Rogers once said, “Everything is funny, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.” This applies in this situation because the people who are taking the pictures and the audience of the accounts are laughing at the people being posted, but not imagining what they would feel if they were being caught off guard and taking photos of them. 

You really have to try and put yourself in someone’s shoes to understand. If I was the person being posted on the sleeping account it wouldn’t really bother me, but if I got posted on the eating or bathroom account I would feel embarrassed and uncomfortable because people were invading my privacy and I can assure you a lot of people would feel the same way.