The ‘Wholesome Memes’ project was started in early 2017. Over the years, it attracted a community of 38.7k loyal followers who love what the account stands for. However, at the time of writing, it appears that the curators have taken a break from posting new wholesome memes. 

It’s easy to see why so many people love the content shared by the project. It’s lighthearted. It’s fun. It offers a nice contrast to a lot of the emotional ick you watch and read about every single day. We all need a pick-me-up from time to time. Sometimes, a handful of memes are enough to (slightly) restore our faith in humanity.

Human beings are fundamentally social creatures. Our ancestors needed to form strong, durable social connections in order to survive, as well as to thrive.

Though our level of technological development has soared over thousands of years, our innate drive to connect and relate to others hasn’t gone away. It’s still very much present.

One way to connect to other people is through memes. At their core, memes are what we share and reshare. They can be ideas, funny pictures, or even attitudes. So when we laugh at memes or spam our social circles with them, we’re actively participating in the culture of a particular group of people. The only difference is that this is mostly done online now, rather than in person.

It’s nice to stay in touch with your friends through cat memes and silly little Instagram reels. And remote communication is certainly better than being completely isolated and alone. However, online messaging will never replace quality meetups in person. Usually, people are busy with work, studying, parenting, and a dozen other things.

Some of them forget that relationships—like our health and skills—need consistent attention and nurturing. 

There are very utilitarian reasons to genuinely invest in building deep connections with other people. To put it bluntly, folks who have lots of meaningful, positive relationships in their lives live longer, have a higher quality of life, and are way happier.

So even if you prefer to be by yourself, it’s well worth consciously reaching out more often to the people you care about the most.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development has been running since 1938 and has been extensively covered in the news and by content creators in recent years. The 8+ decade-spanning study has come to a very simple, common sense, but important conclusion. Namely, that good relationships lead to health and happiness. However, The Atlantic notes that you must actively nurture those relationships. Hoping that they’ll turn out alright won’t be enough.

As Forbes comments on the Harvard study, supportive and nurturing relationships protect us against the stresses of life. Folks with strong(er) social connections have lower rates of diabetes and arthritis, as well as cognitive decline and other chronic conditions. In effect, these meaningful relationships help calm us down during turbulent times.

It’s not just positive relationships that are good for us: their lack is horrible, utterly horrible, for our physical, emotional, and mental health. To be very clear, social isolation is a massive problem that wrecks people’s quality of life.

The US Surgeon General’s advisory made it clear that social disconnection is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. However, once again, these connections have to be meaningful to improve our lives. Superficial chitchat at work or elsewhere doesn’t count for much.

“To be clear, social connections don’t just mean happy hour or the water cooler chats we’ve mythologized since Covid killed the traditional workplace. True social connection is about creating moments of meaning that drive aligned purpose and belonging. Small or large affirmations that your voice matters, your colleagues trust you, your organization needs you. Social connection, or social capital, is the glue that holds your workplace together,” Ann Kowal Smith writes on Forbes.

Social disconnection affects more than just individual people’s lives or local communities. It costs American businesses roughly $154 billion a year. Employees who are socially connected are more productive. On the flip side, workers who find themselves isolated are not engaged. And they’re not happy. This leads to a lot of misery at work… and worse results for companies.

There are very clear reasons to foster meaningful connections and empathy, for individuals and businesses alike. And they’re easy to see whether you think altruism and relationships are valuable in their own right or if you’re looking at productivity spreadsheets. It sometimes takes a handful of silly memes to remind all of us that wholesomeness is a single kind act away.