Comic relief has never felt so good. Or necessary.
Abrar Al-Heeti
Abrar Al-HeetiVideo producer / CNET
Abrar Al-Heeti is a video producer for CNET, with an interest in internet trends, entertainment, pop culture and digital accessibility. She graduated with bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Abrar was named a Tech Media Trailblazer by the Consumer Technology Association in 2019, and a winner of SPJ NorCal's Excellence in Journalism Awards in 2022. Though Illinois is home, she now loves San Francisco -- steep inclines and all.
The year 2020 hasn't been great for a lot of reasons -- namely, Kobe Bryant's death, devastatingwildfires and, of course, the coronavirus pandemic, to name a few. But this year did bless us with a critical asset for surviving the madness: stellar memes.
Humans have long used humor as a coping mechanism for tragedy, since it helps us find commonality and provides comic relief. Memes can be an effective way of addressing tough topics, psychologists say. That became quite evident this year. There was no shortage of difficulty or tragedy, and so, no shortage of memes attempting to find light in all the uncertainty.
Here are some of the top memes, tweets and TikTok videos that serve as documents of this tumultuous year. This is only a small sample of all the incredibly creative and hilarious content churned out by creators and folks across social media just trying to make it through.
Quarantine memes for those glued to their screens
We've all been stuck inside most of the year thanks to COVID-19, which means we've spent a lot of time online as we cope with our "new normal." Because the virus has affected pretty much every aspect of our lives, it's a theme that runs through many of these memes.
Let's take a trip down memory lane to when the US believed it had a better grip on the pandemic than Italy, and young people who thought they were invincible decided it was the best time to buy cheap plane tickets:
And then we had to figure out how to do this whole quarantine thing:
QUARANTINE DIARY
Day 1: I have stocked up on enough non-perishable food and supplies to last me for months, maybe years, so that I can remain in isolation for as long as it takes to see out this pandemic
Day 1 + 45 minutes: I am in the supermarket because I wanted a Twix
— nikki “cute trash” black (@nikkiblackcat) March 18, 2020
And then came all the Zoom meetings. We had fun with our backgrounds and effects, and it became harder to take some of our bosses seriously:
my boss turned herself into a potato on our Microsoft teams meeting and can’t figure out how to turn the setting off, so she was just stuck like this the entire meeting pic.twitter.com/uHLgJUOsXk
We also got to see what a Zoom audience looks like, and it's nothing short of awkward:
The virtual Kelly Clarkson Show audience members awkwardly dancing to Vin Diesel's new song is the funniest thing I've seen in weeks. pic.twitter.com/eI0BEuNSPN
Hurricanes, elections, pop culture and everything in between
Of course, not everything was directly related to the pandemic. Racial justice began to get the attention it deserves following the police killing of George Floyd. As more people began learning about the Black Lives Matter movement, some became an easy target for meme makers:
One of the most talked about television events was the premiere of The Last Dance, which chronicles Michael Jordan's journey with the Chicago Bulls and follows the team's 1997-98 season. It was a compelling and gripping documentary, but the internet always finds ways to feed off anything even remotely humorous:
Food on Ubereats $21.48 Delivery Fee $0.99 Tip $3 ————————————-
We got other great memes from the US presidential election, including this perfectly versatile Bernie Sanders one that began circulating after the senator once again asked for our financial support:
"I'm going to create an environment that is so toxic," a quote by Sue Sylvester from Glee, was revived across Twitter and expertly applied to various scenarios:
Kim Kardashian showed us money can in fact free you from the shackles of the pandemic. After she posted about flying her closest friends and family to a private island for her birthday, the Twitterverse went wild:
After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time. pic.twitter.com/vnPntHsKB8
One of the best things about the short-form video app is users can share their own spin on content they like -- or that they think is ridiculous. This video triggered an insane number of spoofs due to its bizarre messaging and the slightly creepy appearance of its creator:
