Pop Culture and the Pandemic

 As the world-wide lockdowns began, people needed to find ways to humor themselves to avoid boredom. This boredom found its way to the internet in the form of videos and memes; not only in the US but in countries around the world as well. 

Tiktok has been a major social media platform and outlet during this pandemic, which has lead to people to create videos in quarantine or in response to the pandemic. Humorous videos, such as the one linked here (posted on March 25, 2020, by the creator) was created to give the audience a sense of comedic relief. The sound in the video is based on a compilation of snippets from the show Keeping up with the Kardashians, which was popular to use during the beginning of the pandemic. The video consists of many aspects of the pandemic in response to the beginning of the pandemic in the US, including hand sanitizer being used to combat the virus, college students being sent home for Spring Break and two weeks after, which then turned into college classes being converted onto an online platform, and the toilet paper shortage, which happened during the beginning of the pandemic and lasted for almost a month.

In countries outside the US, incorporating popular culture into daily life was a way to get through the lockdowns, such as in Barcelona. The link to the video I'm referring to is found here. In this video (and in places like Italy), people went out onto their balconies and played or sang music to entertain each other when they weren't able to leave their residences. In the video linked above, a pianist in Barcelona is playing the song "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion, which is commonly known to be the feature song in the movie Titanic, and a neighbor, who happened to play the saxophone, joined in to add to the entertainment.