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About

The United States Becomes Number One Country For Coronavirus Cases refers to the news that the U.S. now leads the world for the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, surpassing China, Italy and any other country for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic. Following the announcement, a series of memes arose describing the news on a large number of websites and social media platforms in late March 2020, typically poking fun at America’s perceived desire to be number 1 for most situations.

Origin

On March 26th, 2020, several media publications released the news that, for the first time since the outbreak, the U.S. had become the country with the most confirmed cases of coronavirus (although the number for China is widely speculated to be underreported). In the wake of the announcement, the news began trending on a number of social media platforms, which resulted in a wave of memes reacting to it or referencing it alongside "We’re number 1!"

One such example was tweeted by Twitter^[1] user @Greenclaw164 on March 26th, 2020, shortly after the news began trending on the platform. The tweet (seen below) received over 1,000 retweets and 5,200 likes.

when you see We're number one trending but it's not robbie rotten pic.twitter.com/71EM7dYEVa

— Greenclaw164 (@Greenclaw164) March 26, 2020

Spread

Similar memes continued to spread in the following days as users from other social platforms and websites created their own examples referring to the announcement. On March 26th, 2020, Redditor^[2] fcgyk posted a version to the r/dankmemes sub. This post (shown below) received nearly 20,000 likes, 360 comments and a couple Reddit awards.

Twitter^[3] user TriestSoul also reacted with a reference to Robbie Rotten’s “We Are Number One” in a tweet on March 26th, 2020. This reaction (seen below) was liked over 1,700 times and retweeted 253 times.

We're number 1??more like…WE ARE NUMBER ONE! HEY! pic.twitter.com/jTAfVzPIWw

— 💎𝙏𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙚💎 @ ACNH🏝 (@TriestSoul) March 26, 2020

Redditor^[4] Leipurinen posted another meme on March 26th, 2020, depicting the number of confirmed cases alongside the title, “USA! USA! USA! USA!” The post (shown below) received over 21,100 upvotes, 749 comments and several Reddit awards.

On March 26th, 2020, Redditor^[5] marzak12 used a similar format with a different reaction image and received roughly 5,500 upvotes and 156 comments (seen below).

Redditor^[6] organic_crystal_meth posted another variant with Robbie Rotten on March 27th, 2020, to the r/dankmemes sub. The meme, which used a GIF of the song, (shown below) was upvoted over 15,000 times.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References