This year was no joke — but thanks to the internet, we still had some laughs.
The madness began relatively early in 2020, with a global pandemic, the death of George Floyd, and a wild presidential election that continues to stir controversy. But through it all, we’ve had the levity of social media, with its irreverent takes on the events and pop culture moments that we were all experiencing.
On Instagram alone, users uploaded more than 1 million posts per day mentioning the word “meme,” according to the social network — and plenty of others also found their way to Twitter and Facebook. If anything, sharing them became a way to connect and commiserate at great social distance.
Here’s a look at the year’s five best categories and spin-offs.
“Tiger King”
Netflix’s buzzy “Tiger King” docuseries, which highlighted the bizarre personalities of big cat breeders — and the stranger interpersonal dramas between them — seemed to hit the streaming service at just the right moment. In late March, when COVID-related shutdowns had just begun and we all became house cats, it offered the blessing of a much-needed distraction — which drove its viewers to a speedy obsession. Those with quick ideas — and a lot of extra time on their hands — quickly pounced.
One genre of Tiger King jokes blended the show’s most eccentric star, Joe Exotic, with quarantine themes, including boredom.
While another was uncertainty-driven anxiety.
But the biggest batch focused on Joe Exotic’s bitter feud with Carole Baskin, the cat keeper who Exotic has accused of killing her disappeared husband, Don Lewis, by feeding him her own rescue tigers. (Baskin has denied involvement. Meanwhile, Exotic is now serving a 22-year prison sentence for animal abuse and a murder-for-hire plot to kill her.)
Meme-ers also latched onto Baskin’s trademark greeting.
Coronavirus
The COVID-19 pandemic took center stage in 2020, spreading around the world in a matter of months and leaving massive fatalities in its wake. Although there are brighter days ahead, with the rapidly developed vaccine, the US death toll just surpassed the grim 300,000 mark, and last week saw a record rise in fatalities.
Among these tragedies, social-media turned the frightening coronavirus into a meme in an effort to lift spirits and lessen anxieties. One of first iterations came in March after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended mindful hand-washing — not just with clean water and soap, but also for lengthy 20-second intervals. Soon after, 17-year-old William Gibson launched Wash Your Lyrics: a way to keep track of time while washing your hands as you sing your favorite song’s lyrics in your head. Examples included lyrics from Queen, Travis Scott and, well, quirky tune from a certain Canadian comedy that made it big in America.
Not long after, Ina Garten blessed us all with a step-by-step how-to video for making a massive, one-person Cosmopolitan cocktail, using almost an entire bottle of Grey Goose vodka and an oversize Martini glass. That, too, gave rise to a number of memes, the best of which showed images of Garten drinking from the huge vessel.
“Quarantine snacks,” said one bit of text written over the glass, with “Me” written over Garten.
But nothing summed up the pandemic-inspired stress-eating and large cocktail-cravings better than this:
#2020Challenge
As the pandemic wore on over the summer, Instagram users hopped on the #2020Challenge hashtag, created by Reese Witherspoon, to convey their emotional progression through the year with a series of photos. The actress’s own, for instance, showed a grid of nine pictures of herself, in character, separated into nine months from January to September. In January, she’s a cheery Elle Woods from “Legally Blonde” — but she’s a stressed-outCheryl Strayed from “Wild” from June through September.
A number of other celebrities hopped on board, such as Charlize Theron and Kerry Washington. But Mindy Kaling’s pure looks of despair took the cake.
Even brands, including the New York Post, took part. Netflix showed snaps of a “Stranger Things” character under growing distress, while American Girl gave followers a disheveled-looking doll. But cheers to Budweiser for winning this round.
The presidential election
This year’s contentious presidential election was marked by an aggressive first debate, delayed vote counting and even an unsuccessful bid to take the results to the Supreme Court. But across political allegiances, memes provided comic relief, and even put some things in perspective.
For starters, Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, the first woman and the first woman of color to have the title, became the subject of a Twitter meme to show the historical significance.
And speaking of Kamala Harris, one highly memed moment came during October’s Vice Presidential debate, where the infamous fly landed on Vice President Mike Pence’s head and stayed there for 2 minutes and 9 seconds. On Instagram, it received the millennial-friendly “Hey Arnold!” treatment.
As we arrived at Election Day, when a winner wasn’t declared, the momentum didn’t stop. Americans found themselves eager to get final election tallies from states including Arizona and Nevada, the latter of which social-media users pointed at for taking its sweet time.
And while we waited, we drank.
Dolly Parton Challenge
Country music titan Dolly Parton recently made headlines for donating a cool $1 million into COVID-19 vaccine research, as well as saving the life of a child actress on the set of her new Netflix holiday movie “Christmas on the Square.” Early this year, she even made a big impact on social-media with the Dolly Parton Challenge, which became one of 2020’s most viral hits, according to Instagram.
The four-picture collage, which she captioned “Get you a woman who can do it all,” showed four different photos of her separated by the sites for which they’re most appropriate. A family-friendly shot of Parton in a Christmas sweater was labeled “FACEBOOK,” while another from her 1978 Playboy shoot in a bunny look says “TINDER.”
The upload quickly went viral, even among celebrities, including Parton’s goddaughter Miley Cyrus.
Other notables: Mariah Carey, though she posted hers several days late, and Jared Leto, who nailed it with a LinkedIn photo of him holding his 2014-won Oscar trophy, an artsy Instagram image of him playing a guitar and a topless pic for Tinder.
How it started vs. how it’s going
This buzzy Twitter meme started one way, then started going in many different directions.
Surprisingly, though it’s so appropriate for 2020, its origins predate this outrageous year.
It all began in September 2019 (remember 2019?) as a cutesy way for social-media users to show relationship photos. The first one came from Twitter user @vjllanelles, who posted an image split of a direct-message conversation and, how it ended, with the two women embracing each other. It went viral with 24,500 likes.
But since then, people have applied the versatile formula to various situations. A standout is one that illustrates a breakup, which earned 1.3 million likes.
But it’s more than just lost love. A number of Twitter users hopped on the trend to show their own glow-ups over the years. Guy Fieri tweeted an image of his Food Network audition tape alongside a fiery shot of himself now, while Ellie Goulding shared one pic of her performing in her early days alongside an image of her putting on a show for a packed stadium. Lil Nas X, meanwhile, showed different proof of his path to fame.
People even used the formula to illustrate their fitness journeys like this one, which shows one woman’s dramatic weight loss.
Some, perhaps, may just want to forget all of this year’s madness.
December 17, 2020 at 05:11AM
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The 5 best and funniest memes that really got us through 2020 - New York Post
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