About

Social Distancing Violation Parodies refers to parodies of tweets which expressed outrage at people crowding in parks in apparent violation of social distancing rules. The parodies would often show famous pieces of art or film stills depicting crowds while professing the behavior was unacceptable.

Origin

On May 2nd, 2020, pictures of a crowded West Village, New York City park began going viral on Twitter as people expressed outrage at the apparent violations of social distancing. For example, Twitter user @celestrogen^[1] sarcastically tweeted "It has been nothing short of an honor to have stayed inside for 8 weeks for these amazing people in the west village today <3," gaining over 5,300 retweets and 63,000 likes (shown below)

Spread

As the image spread, Twitter users began to post parodies showing artwork of crowds, decrying the art as not respecting social distancing. For example, Twitter user @Brynntrill2^[2] posted a page from Where's Waldo?, gaining over 140 retweets and 2,800 likes (shown below, left). User @MichaelHartney^[3] posted "A Sunday On La Grande Jatte" by George Seurat, gaining over 29,000 retweets and 247,000 likes (shown below, right).

Others posted screens from films in parody of the tweets. For example, Twitter user @ridiculouscrabs^[4] posted a still from Midsommar (shown below, left). User @Luiseach^[5] made the joke using a still from Grease (shown below, right).^[5] The parodies were covered by StayHipp.^[6]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References