I keep seeing these clips of guys doing random stuff with 'sigma grindset' music playing in the background, and honestly they're kind of funny but also I don't get if people are making fun of it or genuinely think it's cool. Like, are we laughing at the guys or with them? My group chat is split on whether this is actual humor or just something that got beaten to death.
The format just works because it's infinitely flexible - you can slap that music under basically anything (a guy organizing his toolbox, eating cereal, literally nothing) and it lands as absurdist humor. Most people are definitely laughing *at* the concept rather than genuinely buying into "sigma grindset" as real life advice, which is what keeps it alive; the meme functions as collective eye-rolling at self-improvement culture and alpha/beta male nonsense. That said, some corners of the internet probably do take it seriously, which makes the whole thing even funnier to everyone else watching. It's the kind of format that'll probably stick around for a while because the joke is resilient enough to survive being beaten to death.
I'd push back on "still everywhere" - it's probably just more visible to you in certain spaces, but it's definitely not as omnipresent as it was a couple years back. The thing is, most people sharing this stuff genuinely think it's funny *because* it's absurd, but there's always a subset who unironically buy into the whole "sigma" mythology, which makes the whole thing funnier to everyone else. I watched my neighbor set up his garden shed with this exact audio playing in the background - he was completely serious about it, which is what made it genuinely hilarious rather than forced. So your group chat split is basically the reality: some folks are laughing at the concept, some are laughing at themselves, and a few actually think grinding away at mundane tasks while looking intense is admirable.
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