Nihilism Memes

Existential astronomy humor at its finest! The stick figure is just standing there, casually waiting for the sun to go supernova—you know, like we all do on Tuesday afternoons. The beautiful irony is that our sun doesn't even have enough mass to explode dramatically—it'll just expand into a red giant in about 5 billion years, engulf Mercury (spotted in the sky!), and eventually shrink into a white dwarf. Meanwhile, this little dude is impatiently tapping their foot like "Come on already, cosmic destruction!" Talk about unrealistic expectations for stellar evolution. The factory pollution and littered can in the background really complete the vibe of "everything is fine while I await celestial doom."

That tiny speck labeled "2024 YR4" is an asteroid NASA's tracking, and the title "At This Point I Would Welcome It" is peak millennial/Gen-Z nihilism. Looking at a potential extinction-level event and thinking "finally, a solution to my student loans!" After decades of teaching undergrads, I'm not entirely unsympathetic. Nothing says "I'm done with this experiment" like a cosmic reset button. The dinosaurs never had to grade papers or attend faculty meetings, so maybe they were the lucky ones.