YYou don’t need us to tell you that 2020 has been full of intense emotions, from frustration to boredom to sadness to anger. You also don’t need us to tell you that memes have helped many people cope with this very long year.
Memes have been a force in 2020. A force to vent, a force to call for change, a force to find normalcy, a force to find connection. More than ever, memes have become a lingua franca bridging divides during lockdown, but they have also expanded partisanship. Splits. The Cheezburger Cat and Success Kid memes of the younger internet have matured into waves of jokes that betray a more violent, more cynical online society. The memes of 2020 reflect an internet that has become desensitized to the burning house around it, and the phrase “that’s good” is more of a plea than resignation. Memes and the Internet that spreads them have been honed to a fine, and sometimes desperate, point.
At the same time, memes continue to exist as they always have: universal inside jokes and amusing shorthand for very specific life experiences. They still arouse recognition and even society, whether people communicate with them Impact of COVID-19 on mental health Or about Waiting to order coffee.
They also continue to be hilariously, incomparably stupid. Look no further than Matthew Picture of carp I covered most of Twitter earlier this month.
Through group chats, social media, co-worker oversharing and many other ways, memes have brought many together, separated many from each other, and brought ridicule to extended crisis after extended crisis. So, as 2020 comes to a close, we’ve rounded up some memes that captured the true essence of this unprecedented year, and left an indelible impression on the internet in their wake.
Bernie Sanders asks again
It seems safe to say that no one on Bernie’s 2020 campaign team could have predicted this December 2019 video The then-Democratic presidential candidate’s explicit request for donations while strolling down a snow-covered street would lead to the screenshot that launched thousands of memes. But that’s exactly what happened in a shot from a fundraising ad showing Sanders standing against the cold, asking his supporters for financial help.
This year has left a lot of people wanting. A warm Bernie, cracked in the winter cold, provided the perfect avatar for a call for help.
Go into full Sue Sylvester mode
RaptureThe six-season series may have ended in 2015, but you’d never know it from the memes on the internet. While it seemed like someone was working to sabotage all of our lives behind the scenes, it’s easy to see why Sue Sylvester — the ultimate saboteur of McKinley School played by the legendary Jane Lynch — enjoyed the meme’s resurgence in popularity.
A tough cheerleading coach who strives to create as toxic an environment as possible was an entire mood of 2020 in itself, but it wasn’t always an accusation. While many have used Sue’s threat as a way to discredit those who seek destruction, the meme has also often been used in the first person by those who happily bring more chaos into the world.
Animal crossing rescue
Weeks after New York City went into lockdown, Nintendo released the perfect game to play amid the pandemic. Animal Crossing is a game that relies on players having plenty of time to spend collecting, decorating, and customizing things just to show off to other people who have collected, decorated, and customized their own lives. The game is a very relaxing and fun experienceFull of cute characters and charming moments. Millions of people, many of whom claimed not to be casual video game players, got involved in crafting their island and learned what it feels like to be deeply indebted to a tanuki.
While there isn’t a single meme that has taken the internet by storm, Animal Crossing has inspired numerous music videos, subgenres, and fandoms centered around the game. This beautiful game allowed for escapism in the game and in the memes it helped create.
Pope Francis gives his blessing
On the Internet, nothing is sacred. So it’s no surprise that the idea of Photoshopping a pope offering the company’s chip in religious reverence took off on Twitter. Although people have edited this particular image since it first appeared online in 2013, Twitter users put a new spin on the meme by using the social media site’s tiled image format to make it look like Pope Francis was holding everything from Simba to… twilight Auntie Anne’s Pastries DVDs.
How it started versus how things are going
No matter what you thought 2020 would bring when the clock struck midnight on January 1, it probably wasn’t a global pandemic that would send the world into lockdown for months on end. Of course, that’s why the meme format that mocks scenarios in which things don’t go exactly as you expect has been pretty universally relatable this year — even if it started out as… A nice way to brag about your relationship.
Although this meme can be seen frequently My plans for 2020It was not used only to denounce the Sunnah. In a refreshingly positive development, for many, this meme has become a way to showcase their progress in learning skills, achieve goals, share childhood photos or even proudly display their identity.
Trolley problem
It may be bleak, but so is it in 2020. The Trolley Problem is a famous thought experiment that asks people to consider the moral dilemma of whether it is better to let a speeding trolley take its course and kill a group of people, or to divert the journey. Cart and kill just one to save the others. Finding new ways to frame this issue, with the height of online gallows humor, has become a staple of online coronavirus discourse this year.
The meme has often been used to highlight binary options that many believe are not binary options at all. Can the world’s richest country afford to help keep the economy afloat, or should businesses stay open even if hundreds of thousands of people die? Does wearing a face mask protect people, those they love, and their community, or is it a complete loss of personal freedom?
Trolley Problem memes question the nature of these choices, and aim to highlight the absurdity of limited thinking.
Nature is healing
As carbon emissions declined in the first part of the year as COVID-19 brought much of the world to a standstill, people began posting heart-warming photos and videos. Animals are supposed to return to urban areas. Turns out, many of those viral posts were Misleading. But on the bright side, they set up Twitter users for one of the year’s best parody-driven meme formats: “Nature heals, and we’re the virus.”
DW through the fence
While the summer of 2016 gave us the image of Arthur clenching his fist, the spring of 2020 gave us a resurgence in DW’s popularity looking longingly through the fence meme.
Scenes from the beloved 1990s PBS children’s show Arthur They’ve long been the butt of relevant jokes online, but perhaps never more so than when people started missing the daily outings — from getting their nails done to getting hams with friends — that make life fun while stuck at home amid the coronavirus. FOMO is very real, and in the simplicity of the image, many immediately recognized their own longing.
Everything is cake
In July, BuzzFeed’s food site Tasty shared a video A group of chefs cut a number of very realistic cakes decorated to look like everyday objects, including an alligator shoe, a toilet paper roll, and a potted plant. The Internet quickly came to the conclusion that in a year when nothing else made sense, it was entirely possible for anything at all to turn into cake.
The collective anxiety of “everything is fine” took over, and nothing has been the same online since. This post might be a cake.
Play with what you feel
At the end of summer, Nathan Apodaca reflected our collective vibe with a skateboard, some cranberry juice, and “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac. A short TikTok video showed him skating down the street, taking a swig of juice and singing the line “It’s okay for you to play the way you feel.” It was one of the most beautiful moments of 2020.
On TikTok alone, the video has more than 77 million views. It caught the attention of Mick Fleetwood, co-founder of Fleetwood Mac. “Dreams” were sent to Top of iTunes. The “Dreams” challenge was born. And give us all a few seconds to relax this year.
Comprehensive landscape of the four seasons
One of the most bizarre stories to hit the national stage, which is saying something, occurred on November 7, the day most major news networks declared Joe Biden the winner of the presidential election. That morning, Rudy Giuliani held a news conference in the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping, located in Northeast Philadelphia between a sex shop and a crematorium.
At 9:35 a.m. that day, President Trump tweeted That there would be a meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel, which many considered a hotel chain. Ten minutes later he said He tweeted againSaying “big press conference today in Philadelphia at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping,” which many in the press had never heard of, was no disservice to the company.
Thanks to A tweet From the Philly Four Seasons, it appears someone in the Trump camp mistook the family-owned landscaping business for a luxury hotel downtown. While the Trump campaign denied any wrongdoing, that prevented a few people from assuming that the entire news conference, which bafflingly took place near a busy, noisy highway, was just a big ego.
Don’t worry about what’s in the vaccine
With misinformation surrounding the recently introduced COVID-19 vaccines on the rise — a development that has led to increased vaccine hesitancy among Americans — some pro-vaxxers have turned to memes to calm those who fear getting vaccinated.
One increasingly popular online piece is asking people to reconsider their thoughts about the vaccine if they have taken part in a number of popular trials that may have more worrying side effects.