The Ever Given’s Impact on World Trade -- And Our Memes
- themidnightmagazin
- Apr 30, 2021
- 2 min read
By Sophia Arellano
https://www.pinkbike.com/news/update-remember-the-ever-given-your-new-bike-might-still-be-stuck.html
The Suez Canal has made history once again, and the natural response seemed to be… memes?
We’ve all seen and heard news about the Ever Given -- the massive Golden-class container ship that blocked the Suez Canal from March 23rd to 29th, 2021 on its trip from Malaysia to the Netherlands. The Ever Given ran aground diagonally in a sandstorm, effectively halting all transportation through the Suez Canal. This was a big deal for various reasons -- a large container ship being stuck for an undefinable amount of time meant 12% of world trade would be halted. According to Lloyd’s List, 369 other ships and a total of $50 billion worth of goods in world trade were trapped as a result of this.
But perhaps you’re most familiar with this event through memes. Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and Reddit users were quick to jump on this massive event and transform it into the big March meme. On May 28th, there was a resurgence in toilet paper shortage jokes. The day the ship was freed, # PUT IT BACK found its way to Twitter.
The thousand dollar question is… why?
The absurdity of the situation is the easiest answer. A big ship causing so much global panic just sounds so ridiculous it’s almost laughable. One would think humanity has evolved past trade systems so fragile that one boat (Albeit, a very large boat. The Ever Given was 400 x 59 metres; traversing a body of water roughly 200 metres wide… Who thought this would be a good idea?) could have serious implications on our lives. The Ever Given raises various questions about the infrastructure of the methods we’ve relied heavily on for generations, undermining their reputations and making them… laughable.
And of course, you can never put it past Gen Z to find humour in the most arbitrary of things. The Internet paves the way for new things to fixate on weekly, almost daily -- and in the middle of the pandemic, with everything shut down -- we’ve got the time to seek out absurdity and ridiculousness -- perhaps we’re actively seeking it out, looking for something else in our big world to fixate on and take us out of the complacency of everyday life.
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