Smile! It's only Covid: Analyzing covid-19 internet memes

Abstract

This article describes the special attributes of social media memes and their viral distribution during the Covid-19 pandemic and explores how they can challenge some of our conventional conceptions of creativity and humor. The internet memes turned to be very popular during the lockdown and this has raised questions about the possible relationship between a private creation its mass distribution and its possible assessment. A reasonable hypothesis is that the wide accessibility to the internet has strengthened the resilience and ability to cope with the pandemic and allowed nearly everyone to become a meme creator or receiver. The article lists some of the common themes and artistic devices that were used by meme creators and examines the power and limitations of traditional creativity and humor theories to explain this viral phenomenon.

Keywords

• Memes
• Covid-19
• Internet memes
• Social media
• Creativity
• Humor