Laughing it off? Humorous hate in internet memes and audience interpretive patterns

Internet memes have become a central mode of expression in digital environments, often combining humor with potentially hateful or exclusionary content. While previous research has documented the circulation of humorous hate, less attention has been paid to how audiences interpret such ambiguous material. Drawing on Incongruity Theory of Humor and Social Identity Theory, this study examines how audiences make sense of memes that blend humorous cues with hostility. It is important to note that the theoretical frameworks employed in this study particularly Social Identity Theory and meme literacy are applied to illuminate the discursive patterns observable in public commentary rather than to make claims about individual-level cognitive or psychological processes. The analysis remains strictly at the level of expressed, publicly visible stances. Using a mixed-methods content analysis of 1,294 memes and 2,611 audience comments across five major social media platforms, the study identifies distinct interpretive frames, including humor minimization, moral rejection, ambivalence, and non-evaluative engagement. The findings reveal that humorous hate memes rarely produce uniform interpretations; instead, ambivalence emerges as a dominant response, and individual memes frequently elicit multiple, competing readings. Interpretive patterns remain largely consistent across platform environments and sentiment categories. Given that generational membership cannot be established for individual commenters, the study frames its findings primarily in terms of audience-level interpretive patterns rather than generation-specific behavioral tendencies. The study contributes to research on digital discourse by conceptualizing humorous hate as an interpretively unstable and socially negotiated form of online communication.