Ever Given: The ship that launched a thousand memes
Longer than the Eiffel Tower, the Ever Given is one of the biggest container ships in operation. For much of its three-year existence, it’s been transporting the world’s goods from port to port, a floating colossus that makes global trade chug along.
When the vessel got stuck in Egypt’s Suez Canal on Tuesday it became famous the world over for another reason—its plight inspired a torrent of Internet memes that have been flooding our social media feeds in recent days.
That makes sense. The Ever Given has become a giant metaphor for a world that’s stuck—stuck in a lockdown, stuck awaiting a vaccine appointment, stuck wondering when our kids will go back to school or whether we should even bother to book that summer vacation.
Here are a few of our favorite Ever Given memes:
The market implications
If it seems your stock portfolio is stuck in neutral these days, you’re not imagining things. The Nasdaq 100, a collection of Big Tech big-caps, has barely budged in 2021. It’s down 0.7% year to date. Big Tech, too, is stuck in the metaphorical mud.
So Suez you!
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The best memes also serve as tiny little admissions to the world that, Yeah, I’ve been there. The Ever Given has given the Internet permission to share just that.
The unbearable heaviness of being
Inside a writer’s tortured mind
Time to get some air. Again
Aren’t we all
More must-read stories from Fortune:
- A “large number” of stimulus checks are coming in the mail—here’s when you can expect your payment
- A running list of free stuff you can get for showing your COVID-19 vaccine card
- The real “Wolf of Wall Street” has some thoughts about the stock market—and Bitcoin
- You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin—at a staggering cost, critics warn
- Krispy Kreme will offer free doughnuts—all year long—to people with COVID-19 vaccination cards
