Bernie At The Inauguration, Vaccine Announcement Vs. Rollout, And This Week's Other Best Memes, Ranked
Here at Digg, we try our best to cover the most important and confounding memes that come across the timeline. But the web is littered with tons of great memes that never quite hit the mainstream and instead just bounce around the weird corners of Twitter or Reddit.
Enter our recurring feature, Memes, Ranked. This week, we've got Joe Biden and Lady Gaga, the vaccine announcement vs. the vaccine rollout, Donald Trump's note for Biden and, of course, Bernie Sanders at the inauguration.
4. Donald Trump's Note For Joe Biden
The meme
After much speculation following a norm-breaking presidency, it was confirmed that Donald Trump did in fact leave a note in the Oval Office for Joe Biden, just as previous outgoing presidents had done for their successors. On Wednesday evening, Biden called the letter "very generous" but wouldn't divulge its contents. No need, really, as the internet had already let us know what the letter said.
Examples
Adwait Patil
3. Vaccine Announcement Vs. Vaccine Rollout
The meme
After days, weeks, months of bad news last year, Pfizer and Moderna's announcements in mid-November that their COVID-19 vaccines are roughly 95% effective signaled a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Not only were the vaccines developed in record time, but their high efficacies are almost unheard-of in vaccinology. Finally, some good news.
With two highly effective vaccines approved by the FDA, the US government set a goal to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of 2020. However, as the ball dropped on December 31, just 2-3 million people had gotten their shots, despite the fact that some 12.4 million doses had been distributed across the country.
To speed up the vaccine rollout, former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced on January 12 that the government would release doses being reserved for second shots. But just three days later, the Washington Post reported that "no such reserve existed" or had ever existed: all vaccines had already been distributed to the states.
Operation Warp Speed helped produced a vaccine in record time; getting shots in arms is turning out to be a whole other story.
Examples
Jon-Michael Poff
2. Joe Biden And Lady Gaga
The meme
While Lady Gaga's dress at the inauguration may have inspired many memes because of its "Hunger Games" vibes, another meme featuring Lady Gaga and President Joe Biden had been gaining steam earlier in the week.
Twitter users have been coming up with funny captions for an image of the two from a 2017 PSA video for "It's On Us," a campaign launched during the Obama era to end sexual assaults on college campuses. The meme that emerged this week, however, is divorced entirely from the context of the video. It instead focuses on the fact that Lady Gaga and Joe Biden look like they are a couple with a significant age gap — and that Gaga's look is reminiscent of Meredith Blake in "Parent Trap."
Examples
BJ Pang-Chieh Ho
1. Bernie Sanders At The Inauguration
The meme
As Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in Wednesday, Bernie Sanders appeared to garner the most attention from the internet with his charmingly unkempt presence at the inauguration, braving the chilly weather with his knitted mittens and Burton winter parka. He also was conspicuously holding a manila envelope, which reportedly held his ticket.
Sanders' trademark frumpiness captured the imagination of Twitter, with witty netizens coming up with many clever captions for the Vermont senator's appearance.
Examples
James Crugnale
If you're hungry for more memes, check out our roundup of all the best inauguration memes. Here, too, is last week's "Memes, Ranked" article, where we rank Capitol meemaw, then I just burst into tears, replacing Donald Trump in "Home Alone 2," Damn Shawty, let's... and Trump got banned from Twitter.
