More Than a Meme: The Low-Stakes Guide to Social Maintenance
Hey Team,
I’ve been working on a presentation for an upcoming conference called Neurodiversion, and when I was thinking about what I wanted to present, the idea of memes came to me, and I'm gonna be honest here: this was mostly out of a desire to just make looking at memes part of work. As I started looking into the concept more and putting together the presentation, I realized there's a lot more to it than I initially thought.
Memes are more than just digital clutter; they're a fairly vital part of modern culture. I know how that sounds, but this is visual shorthand. They give us a way to communicate that we are part of an in-group simply by understanding what the meme is. They are these inside jokes across entire online communities, and the more I dove in, the more I realized that memes are more important than they seem on the surface. They aren't just jokes; they're ways to find community, understanding, and meaning in our own experience. That's important even if they come from something silly.
And so that's what we're going to explore in this episode: how memes can give us meaning, how they can give us community, and how they can be a little dangerous.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/278
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Let's start off by defining what a meme is, because while we feel like we know what it is, it's also a little bit hard to describe. Is it just an image macro with some text? A funny gif? Or are they just in-jokes?
So the word meme was first coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. He used it to describe how cultural ideas replicate and evolve, much like our genes. For Dawkins, a meme could be anything: a tune, a fashion trend, or even a belief; basically, any idea that spreads through imitation or mimicry.
Now, when you or I are talking about a meme, we're almost certainly talking about some kind of internet meme. In my mind, typically, it is an image paired with text that makes it relatable, funny, and shareable. But it could also be a webcomic or a screenshot of a social media post. We're not going to be gatekeeping here with a "back in my day, memes had cats asking for cheeseburgers" attitude.
By the way, if you're looking to feel old, I can has Cheezburger first appeared 18 years ago.
But back on topic, because of the rise of the social internet, we really do get this viral, Dawkins-esque experience of what a meme is. It’s not just a single image; it’s a lineage. We have recurring archetypes like the Distracted Boyfriend or Woman Yelling at a Cat. We have formats and templates that evolve daily, sometimes hourly or faster, and inside jokes born in the trenches of Reddit and various niche fandoms across the web. They thrive on this remix culture, where people hijack an existing meme to express entirely new ideas. And perhaps hijack isn’t quite the right word, more of an appropriation - taking the original and evolving it into something that is both new but also still familiar.
And so, memes become a form of social signaling, a way to say "I get it" and "I belong." For us, that signal is "ADHD/Neurodivergent." They play into these dopamine-driven feedback loops, where the micro-burst of recognition and humor helps them go viral. When I see something funny that's ADHD-related, there are people I'm going to send that to immediately. It’s a way of saying "I see you" through a screen. I think this is the perfect place to introduce the concept of "Pebbling."
There's a phenomenon among Adélie and Gentoo penguins in which they present smooth pebbles, the kind used for nest building, to their partners as part of courtship. A male penguin will present a female with a stone. If she’s impressed, she'll find a stone too, and they will go back and forth collecting until a nest is built.
While this is a survival trait to keep their eggs dry, it’s also an act that proves loyalty and interest. It’s a small yet meaningful gesture that reinforces the connection and provides reassurance. In humans, "Pebbling" works in a similar fashion with small, thoughtful, or humorous gifts as a way of showing affection and maintaining social bonds. It's an act of saying "I'm thinking of you" without the executive function required to write a long text. And of course, this can apply to the act of sharing memes as well.
This has become a popular idea in neurodivergent communities as a form of nonverbal communication, especially for those who find traditional social maintenance draining. Pebbling provides a way to express affection in a low-stakes way. Memes are the easiest pebbles we can give, but they are still telling someone, "Hey, I’m thinking of you." Of course, the context has to be there. If I send my friend a Dungeon Crawler Carl meme and they’ve never read it, they’re just going to send me back a question mark and still have no idea who Mongo is and why he is appalled. But if I send them a meme about how we both need to hydrate because I just remembered that I haven’t had anything to drink in a few hours, and I can predict my bestie is the same, well, then that works out.
This isn't just about one-on-one interactions, though. There are plenty of places online where you can signal that you are part of the in-group with a well-placed meme. It’s a digital "secret handshake." Admittedly, the other side can also happen when we see a "How do you do, fellow kids?" moment from a brand. It’s clear they don't know what they're talking about, and it signals that they are an outsider pretending to be an insider. This is why corporate memes often feel so, as the young people say, cringe.
For the ADHD brain, a meme can do something remarkable: it can distill complex experiences, like time blindness, rejection sensitivity, or executive dysfunction, into a single, instantly relatable image. We see it and think, "This is exactly what it feels like," without having to explain the messy wiring of our brain.
Take Dani Donovan’s classic ADHD storytelling comic. It perfectly captures the nature of the twists and turns that come up while we’re trying to tell a story, adding context and related other pieces, and remembering crucial details out of order. In a single image, it relates an entire experience that so many of us with ADHD have experienced.
When we have this cultural shorthand, we get both humor and support. They normalize the condition and help fight the internalized shame we often feel around our ADHD. It turns "I'm failing again" into "My brain is just doing that 'storytelling' thing again," which is far more compassionate.
Additionally, memes are novel. They're fast, visual, and bite-sized, exactly what the ADHD brain craves. It’s why meme-scrolling is so addictive; each one offers a micro-burst of dopamine. But paradoxically, that scroll can be both a trap and a sanctuary. We find humor that helps us process emotions and normalize our feelings. They can even help us process the frustration of being misunderstood. We have memes about neurotypicals asking why we can’t "just use a planner." They turn that frustration into social commentary and community insight.
But as I said, this can also be a trap, so I don't want to leave this by saying that memes are amazing and we should all love them all the time. One of the unfortunate side effects of how well memes propagate is that they do so with any idea that's "sticky" enough, meaning they easily become vectors for misinformation. Because memes lack context, they can be dangerous.
One example comes from the issue of over-pathologizing ADHD, where a brief look through some memes makes us feel like every quirk of our life is actually a symptom. This can lead to a loss of agency, making us wonder, "Am I a person, or just a collection of ADHD traits?" By pathologizing mundane things, we can sometimes take something that is a universal human experience and label it as just another piece of ADHD.
Walking into a room and forgetting why you’re there? Everyone experiences that. Losing your keys? Also universal. The difference with ADHD often comes from the severity and chronic nature of the disorder. Still, we have to be careful to avoid the "Everyone is a little ADHD" narrative. It devalues the actual impairment of the disorder and makes it harder for people with severe executive dysfunction to be taken seriously.
I mean, one of my favorite misinformation memes is just a screen grab of a post with the text: "getting diagnosed with ADHD as an adult owns cuz you get to walk into a doctor's office and have a guy with a medical degree tell you 'aye boss you got diet autism and the cure is to microdose meth' lmfao"
Funny, sure, that’s why it spreads. But it is categorically wrong. ADHD is not "diet autism," and stimulant medication is molecularly and functionally very different from meth. When someone shares this, even as a joke, it can easily reinforce the stigma that prevents people from seeking help. At the same time, I don’t want to be the fun police. As I said, I kind of find that meme funny, but I also want to acknowledge the danger that can come with virality without context. I know that post was a joke, but not everyone who sees it will. Some may even just have their current views of ADHD reinforced and see it as further proof that it’s a “made-up” disorder.
We know that just because someone is reposting something doesn't make it true, but it is still a trap we all fall into. I can't count the number of times I've read something to my wife, only to realize halfway through that I hadn't checked a single source. It is incredibly easy to fall for something just because it looks true enough.
So, as we move through these digital spaces, we need to ask: Does this meme normalize a struggle, or does it romanticize a disability? Does it describe a trait, like being messy, or a symptom, like executive dysfunction?
A meme tends to be a map, but it doesn’t always show the way. It might be a way to help you find your community, but it shouldn't be mistaken for the clinical reality of your brain. A good meme makes you feel seen; a bad meme makes you feel like a caricature. If a meme makes a symptom feel "quirky" but ignores the "impairment," be skeptical.
Memes are an incredible tool for connection, but they were never meant to be a tool for clinical self-assessment. Use them to find your tribe, to pebble your friends, and to laugh at the chaos.
This Episode's Top Tips
For ADHD brains, traditional social upkeep sometimes requires more executive function than we have available. "Pebbling" allows for a low-stakes connection that signals "I am thinking of you" without the cognitive load of a conversation.
Digital content can act as a starting point for self-discovery, but it’s still not a diagnostic tool. A meme can point you in the right direction, but it doesn't represent the actual lived experience of your impairment. Don't mistake a "relatable quirk" for the totality of the disorder.
Virality is not a proxy for truth. ADHD brains can be prone to "sticky" ideas and sometimes skip steps on verifying facts. The shift here is moving from "It’s relatable, so it’s true" to "It’s relatable, but what’s the source?”