Quarantine Won’t Be Forever, but Pandemic Humor Is Timeless
A Century Before TikToks and Memes, the 1918 Flu Inspired Rhyming Poetry and Skeptical Satire
Early in the coronavirus pandemic, as society shut down and social distancing became the new norm, user-created media content about life during the pandemic exploded. Today’s technology makes it easy to produce and share such messages with the world. However, expressing what life is like in a pandemic through available media is nothing new. Writings about disease—poems, prose, songs, and quips—have long flourished during epidemics, as people have struggled to emotionally and physically adjust to isolation, sickness, and death. Sometimes such writings have been serious; just as often they reflect …
