It's... a sign of the times. facebook
for the class of 2020 featuring Oprah Winfrey, Miley Cyrus and Lil Nas X. While some are using Facebook as a pandemic resource, others are using it to escape. The appeal of hyper-niche, highly interactive meme groups, a phenomenon fairly specific to Facebook, has massively intensified during quarantine.
Emily Orenstein, 23, is one of the co-founders and administrators of, a Facebook meme group dedicated to urban planning and public transit popular with young leftists . She says the 200,000-strong forum has seen a"huge increase in post submissions" since quarantine began,"to the degree that we can barely clear the queue." Half their members are between 18-24, and 40% are 25-34. Orenstein says NUMTOTs mods are trying to strike a balance between"keeping the group as a place where people can escape the constant stream of pandemic news for a bit to have some fun" and sharing"information that could lead people to take positive action ."In general, Facebook is no longer the center of meme culture: Instagram and Twitter each function as their own giant meme groups, with mass in-jokes and codes of language and etiquette. However, given their social and political leanings, both have ceased to be remotely escapist. While Twitter memes are constant reminders of our collapsing society and toxic online dynamics, thanks to groups — where content flow is filtered to all revolve around the same topic — there's a soothing, sane quality to Facebook's strange, secluded nooks., a Facebook group dedicated to humor about B list celebrities with an affiliated podcast, also saw a surge in membership requests when quarantine hit. Moderator Jamie Lewis, 30, says the pandemic hasn't necessarily changed the group's dynamics, but has reinforced"how important it is right now to have a community or a place where you can escape and distract yourself from the general heaviness of our current events." A month ago this strange community had around 145,000 members. At publishing time, it had 1.8 million."We went from having maybe 100 posts a day, to 85,000 pending posts in the span of a few hours," says Tyrese Childs, 20, the founder of the group. He says the group's members are as young as 13, though most are between 18 and 24."It provides a space where you are only interested in one thing: being an ant. And that's why the pandemic will increase Facebook's relevance. People just want to escape to another world," he says. Indeed, character is rarely broken on the site, and current crises are almost never alluded to."Just want to say thank you to the creator of this page you've helped me get thru a lot of depression with this group during this hard time," one earnest poster did break character to share with the group.
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