Hilarious Memes Depicting What 2020 Would Be Like If It Were A Thing

2020 has been notoriously terrible. With Covid lockdowns and a whole host of random assortments of issues, there has been no shortage of bad things happening this year. And it was supposed to be a good one anyway! With people joking in 2015 about how they don’t know where they’ll be in five years because they don’t have Twenty-Twenty vision. I don’t think any of us were expecting what actually happened.

So with that in mind, something completely unexpected, that gradually got more bad even when you thought it couldn’t get any worse. So, as a society, we’ve graduated back into communicating with pictures and archaic imagery, which, in our case, has become memes. What this implies is that we’ve communicated our ability to express how bad the year has been through memes and memes alone.

#1 Big Seed

ThoughtCo discussed the way humans gravitate towards memes:

The English scholar Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” in 1976 in his book, “The Selfish Gene.” Dawkins developed the concept as part of his theory of how cultural elements spread and change over time in the context of evolutionary biology. According to Dawkins, a meme is an element of culture, like an idea, behavior or practice, or style (think clothes but also art, music, communication, and performance) that spreads from one person to another through imitation. For example, the dab dance, or “dabbing” is a notable example of a performative meme that came to prominence during late 2016.

#2 The Woods

#3 On Fire Washing Machine

#4 Thirsty

An internet meme exists online as a digital file and is spread specifically via the internet. Internet memes consist not just of image macros, which are a combination of image and text like this Grumpy Cat meme, but also as photos, videos, GIFs, and hashtags. Typically, internet memes are humorous, satirical, or ironic, which is a key part of what makes them appealing and encourages people to spread them. But humor isn’t the only reason memes spread. Some depict a performance that showcases a skill, like music, dance, or physical fitness.

#5 Crawling Man

#6 Test Results

#7 Stop And Go

#8 Nasty Toilet Paper

#9 Classic Thanksgiving Feast

#10 Duct Tape Fixes Everything

#11 Hanging In There

Just like memes, as Dawkins defines them, are propagated person-to-person through imitation (or copying), so are internet memes, which are digitally copied and then spread anew by anyone who shares them online. Not just any old image with text slapped on it is a meme, despite what sites like MemeGenerator encourage you to believe. Elements of them, like the image or text, or actions performed in a video or depicted in a selfie, must be copied and spread en masse, including creative alterations, in order to qualify as a meme.

#12 At Least You Can Sit On It

#13 Sliding Downwards

#14 Helpful Sign

#15 Level 50 Rubix Cube

According to Dawkins, three factors lead memes to be spread, copied, or adapted from person to person.

Copy-fidelity: the possibility that the thing in question can be accurately copied

Fecundity, the speed at which the thing is replicated

Longevity, or staying power

For any cultural element or artifact to become a meme, it must fulfill all of these criteria.

#16 Confusing Sign

#17 Disgusting Pizza

#18 The Pineapple’s Trying It’s Best

#19 Park Painting

#20 Smells Awful

But, as Dawkins has pointed out, the most successful memes—those that do each of these three things better than others—are those that respond to a particular cultural need or that particularly resonate with contemporary circumstances. In other words, memes that capture the popular zeitgeist are those that are most successful because they are the ones that will capture our attention, inspire a sense of belonging and connectedness with the person who shared it with us, and encourage us to share with others the meme and the collective experience of viewing it and relating to it. Thinking sociologically, we could say that the most successful memes emerge out of and resonate with our collective consciousness, and because of this, they reinforce and strengthen social ties and ultimately, social solidarity.