Disillusioned youth find voice in dark humour
National
By
Caroline Chebet
| Jun 27, 2025
From youths humorously posting their last wishes and eulogies, complete with the photos they’d like used on their epitaphs, online platforms have recently become home to a surge of darkly comic posts. Behind the satire lies a generation expressing deep frustration amid an uncertain future.
Over the past week, digital spaces have morphed into bleakly comical outlets where young people use dark humour to articulate an uncertain future and their readiness to die as killings and abductions incidents, which are synonymous with demonstrations, increase.
Ahead of the June 25 commemoration of youths killed during the 2024 protests, young people flocked to the TikTok page of renowned youthful mortician Ann Mwangangi, requesting to make mortuary deposits ahead of the protests.
In one video, a visibly shocked Ann recounts how someone sent her Sh1,000, claiming it was a deposit for morgue services.
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“I thought people were just expressing themselves on TikTok, but someone went ahead and sent me Sh1,000. When I inquired, they said they were making deposits!” Ann said in one of her videos.
Some posted mock obituaries, others shared ‘final’ portraits ahead of what they described as a ‘sleepover at the morgue.’
While many created eulogy videos with printed tributes, others—like a user named Kabei—shared deeply emotional monologues highlighting the lived realities of desperate youth.
“This is the last thing I want to say before I die tomorrow. They told us to go to school because education is the key. We sat in classes with no windows, we studied in torn uniform, on empty stomachs, we believed them. Our parents believed them too. They gave everything, sold cows and even broke their backs to see us wear that gown,” Kebei narrated. “Years later, here I am, graduated, jobless and hopeless. Turns out the key only opens doors if your father knows someone, if your uncle is a big name and if your name already matters and those of us without these, we stay outside knocking, forgotten.”
Though she tearfully suggested starting a business as a possible path forward, she said punitive taxes make even that dream unviable.
“Even small dreams are not safe here. Maybe if I die tomorrow, my parents could be given Sh2million, which is more than I could give them alive...,” she said.
Some said they had nothing to lose because the State would compensate their parents, while others made references to Albert Ojwang’s death, requesting not to be placed near a wall, for fear they might “hit their heads and die.”
“Mimi risasi yangu msitoe. Lazima nifike nayo before God ajionee evidence,” commente one online user. Others even sarcastically tried to calm down the ‘noisy’ Kenyans, “Tulieni—kila mtu atapata chance ya kuuliwa.”
Japhet Okelo, a teacher from Nakuru, says this is a collective cry for help from a generation emotionally, mentally, and spiritually at breaking point. “This is not a joke or a trend. It’s a sign of young people giving up. They were promised opportunity but handed a broken country. They went to school, passed their exams, and returned home jobless and humiliated,” he said.
He added that while the younger generation is often criticised for being idle, no one is offering them a real chance. But Okelo also observed that this “silent collapse” isn’t limited to the youth. The police, he said—dispatched to confront angry crowds without proper support—are also victims of a broken system.
“The ones in uniform, batons in hand, stone-faced and silent, are breaking inside too. They’re beaten by protesters, insulted by politicians, and abandoned by a government they risk their lives to protect.”