About

You Can Be A Different Person After The Pandemic is the title of an article published in The New York Times by author Olga Khazan. The article examines the phenomenon of people inspired to shake up their lives after the COVID-19 pandemic and broaden their horizons. After the article was published, it began seeing use as a meme on Twitter in which people would publish a screenshot of the article's title and a screenshot of a fictional character who morphs or changes in their piece of media.

Origin

On April 6th, 2021, The New York Times^[1] published "You Can Be A Different Person After The Pandemic" by Olga Khazan in their op-ed section. The article talks about people finding themselves inspired to shake their daily routines and personality habits after the pandemic, as well as the science for how that happens.

The article did not start becoming a meme until roughly five days after it was first published. On April 11th, 2021, users started taking the headline as a prompt with which to add a fictional character known for changing personalities or appearances. One of the first tweets to use the headline in this way was posted by @IllyBocean,^[2] who used a still of Matt Damon from The Talented Mr. Ripley, gaining over 700 retweets and 8,000 likes (shown below, left).

Spread

Later that day, user @wyntermitchell^[3] tweeted an example using the film Black Swan, gaining over 60 retweets and 430 likes (shown below, left). On April 12th, Twitter user @thejessgoodwin^[6] tweeted an example using Orphan Black (shown below, right).

The meme continued to spread on Twitter over the following several days with some variations. For example, on April 12th, user @jzux^[4] posted an exploitable variation, gaining over 180 retweets and 2,800 likes (shown below, left). User @PAYOLETTER^[5] made the joke using Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis, gaining over 4,000 retweets and 23,000 likes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References