Stefán Karl Stefánsson is an Icelandic actor who is best known for playing Robbie Rotten on the children's television series LazyTown.
In October 2016, Stefánsson announced that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
It later emerged in June 2017 that the cancer was of the bile-duct (cholangiocarcinoma), and had also advanced to stage four.
The prognosis was very bleak, Stefánsson's life expectancy was significantly reduced. The official statement, lementing in its tone, was that there was no cure.
There was an outpouring of grief from Stefánsson's many fans but it appears that the grief was premature.
Shockingly, on the 11th of August 2017, Stefánsson announced that he was now free of cancer following a couple of successful surgeries.
I witnessed this dramatic turn of events through my frequent visits to the dank meme community on reddit.
The amount of support Stefánsson was recieving from this community during his cancer ordeal was staggering.
Dank memes about pedophilia and incest were quickly replaced with a plethora memes featuring Robbie Rotten in support of Stefánsson and his recovery.
I feel it had such an impact that it has made me curious about the potential curative powers of dank memes.
Now dank memes might also be explained by most of the popular humor theories, but its black heart is firmly cemented in the relief humor theory promoted by Freud.
Relief theory puts forward the case that humor and laughter are how humans reduce psychological tension.
This means dank memes function as a way to release psychic energy and provides relief of the mental tension caused by societal conformity surpression.
I now feel that futher investigation is warranted in the connection between dank memes and thier potential as curative applications to physical ailments.
While I was studying humor theory at university, I had foolishly written off relief theory because I though Freud was a creep.
I would like to apologise for my bias and I am now going to rectify this by devoting more time to this promising new cancer treatment.