Laugh Away The Apocalypse With Coronavirus Memes: Part 6

A weekly series on memes, meme creators—and making jokes about the end times.

“I’m getting messages—dozens a day—saying, ‘Thank you so much.’ ‘You’re getting me through,’” says Tommy Marcus, founder of @quentin.quarantino. “Doctors are nurses are messaging me, saying, ‘Thank you.’ And I respond, ‘Don’t thank me—thank you.’”

The best Instagram meme accounts are topical, and by this rule, the best ones have come to focus on the coronavirus and the cultural change it has sparked. @quentin.quarantino is one of this new era’s first homegrown hits, launching March 13 and quickly gaining 272,000 followers—its entire existence centered on COVID-19 wisecracks. “I was very in tune with the news about the coronavirus. I was falling along on Reddit in January,” says Marcus, 24, who also runs the popular @unhinged (284,000 followers) meme account about dating. “I think I was just maybe a little more aware that the whole world was about to be shut down.”

Posted the day that the account began, this meme went viral and drew in a lot of @quentin.quarantino’s early fans after several established meme accounts reposted it. “I was just reading an article about Eminem and started thinking about that song” referenced in the meme, “Lose Yourself.” “That’s what you think about when you think of Eminem. I just quickly tweeted that, didn’t really think much of it. It did pretty well.”

Marcus has tried to steer clear of sailing the account directly into political crossfire—on either side of the aisle. “I’ve made a funny meme that I’ve never posted. I just thought, This is gonna end up on some Facebook meme page for Trump 2020, and I don’t want that. Same with Joe Biden.” But he chose to break his own rule a bit with this meme. “This is my favorite. I have some more stuff like that.”

“This was a comment about some of the crazy things that people have said my posts about.” Enough said.

For the record, Marcus isn’t married. “Although,” he says. “After 45 days of seeing no people at all, I kind of wish I was married.”