How Coronavirus Changed the Internet World
At this point, I don’t even want to type ‘the C word’ because anything related to Coronavirus (Cardi B voice) makes me want to vomit. The March declaration of a pandemic impacted our society in more ways than any of us imagined, and no one knew how our fast-paced society would react. Everything shifted to our devices including the way we work, learn, and connect.
Initially, this post was going to show you some fancy charts about how the use of the Internet dramatically increased, that people are spending sooooo much more time on their devices, and the insane increase in video call services. If you're an analytics nerd like me and find those stats interesting, The New York Times already wrote a nice article linked here.
Despite all the s#!ty parts about Corona, there’s always a silver lining to everything. So here’s how Coronavirus changed the Internet world in the best ways possible.
1. People learned how to cook
Limiting trips to the supermarket? Favorite sandwich bread out of stock? Better learn to cook with what you got. Around the world, baking is comfort, especially bread. People were definitely working towards bread perfection.
According to Google Trends, Search interest for ‘Bread’ actually reached an all time high during April 2020. Banana bread, beer bread, French bread, sourdough, focaccia, we were getting fancy.
2. People started washing their damn hands
Vietnamese health officials released a brilliant way to spread awareness about how people can protect themselves from being infected and it has since led to a dance challenge.
Vietnam lyricist, Khắc Hưng, teamed up with Vietnam’s National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health to revise a V-pop song, “Ghen”, into a catchy public health awareness melody. Playing to the tune of “Jealous” (or “Ghen” in Vietnamese), by singers Erik and Min, the video for the song features cute, animated figures to teach proper handwashing.
The music video was so well-received that videos of Internet users dancing to the song were created. The song sparked Quang Đăng, a Vietnamese dancer with over 100,000 followers, to launch an Instagram and TikTok dance challenge, #GhenCoVyChallenge. The dance transforms hand-washing techniques into trending dance moves.
The video made its way to the United States with “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver featuring the song and dance challenge during a segment on the coronavirus.
3. Instagram challenges kept us entertained
The new challenge sticker on Instagram, introduced in the middle of quarantine, changed the way we engage. It allowed us to create, watch, nominate, and participate in all of the viral challenges. It all started with the #stayhomechallenge which encouraged everyone to stay and make videos of what they were doing in quarantine.
Then there was the “See 10, Do 10” push up challenge where a person posts a video of them doing 10 pushups and then tags 10 people. I knew I picked the right friends when none of my friends tagged me in that one…
Now, there are thousands of challenges, so it’s hard to say which ones are the most famous, it depends on who you follow. My personal favorites are ‘guess the gibberish’, #KushUpChallenge, #quarantinepillowchallenge, toilet paper challenge, and last but not least, the Savage challenge introduced on TikTok.
4. TikTok took over
TikTok saw an 55.6% increase in users since January of this year, bringing its total active users to over 800 million worldwide.
One of the most notable challenges is the Savage Challenge introduced by Meg thee Stallion. A fan caught the attention of Meg after she choreographed a catchy TikTok dance to her hit song ‘Savage’, which went viral. On Instagram and Twitter, Meg is always reposting and hyping up her fans for doing the dance, which is a big reason why the challenge has been trending for over 3 months.
5. Memes are (tiger) king
The world went wild for Joe Exotic, 34 million people watched Tiger King the first 10 days of its release and it was Netflix’s #1 most watched show for 2 weeks.
We may never know if Carol Baskin killed her husband, but either way she ended up with Joe’s tiger farm.
The Internet world is just that, it’s own world. It’s fun to watch people create some amazing things with each trend, like the Carole Baskin/Savage Remix TikTok Challenge.
Everyone’s plans for 2020 were thrown out the window. I’ll be the first to admit, the first week that the lockdown went into place, I cried myself to sleep each night with a bottle of wine in my belly. Now, 4 months in, I’ve accepted this as ‘the new normal’.
I think we can all agree, the best thing to come out of Corona was an insane amount of hilarious content.
