The crisis that went viral - the best Suez Canal memes

Have you Ever Given a s*** about shipping before?

 

It was the news story of the week. The Ever Given container ship got stuck in the Suez Canal near the Egyptian city of Suez, on its way from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.

 

The question still remains of how it got stuck in the first place. But what is beyond doubt is the internet's ability to create memes that make us lol, regardless of the severity of the situation.

 

We’ve spent basically a year in lockdown. Most of our days are filled with a whole lot of nothing. So it’s no surprise the most exciting thing to happen is a massive cargo ship getting stuck in a canal.

 

It wasn’t just the obvious facepalm of crashing the 1,312ft long ship into the side of a straight canal, but the rapidly growing queue of ships that formed at either end, costing a reported $400m an hour.

 

What added further fuel to the memeability of this new ‘Suez Canal crisis’ (not to be confused with the Suez Crisis, which was an actual crisis) was the use of a tiny digger to free the colossal cargo container. A parody Twitter account was created for this plucky little digger and its operator.

 

Memes that tapped into the David vs. Goliath nature of the task facing the digger made were particularly funny. People saw similarities between the digger's situation and our current health crisis, its impact on our mental health, and our struggles to be productive:

 

 

 

 

And then there were the ones where people offered solutions to the crisis:

 

 

 

 

Someone even set up a website to provide live updates on the status of the stuck ship: istheshipstillstuck.com

 

But for us, the undisputed winner of the meme-off was this retro reference:

 

 

We didn’t think we’d be seeing Austin Powers doing the rounds in relation to a news story in 2021.

 

Whilst we’re kind of glad the crisis is over - especially for the sake of shipping our gifts and games to our customers around the globe - we are also a bit sad to see the back of those memes. 

 

So, until another meme-worthy story hits the headlines, we're back to colossal issue of Covid, clogging up the news canal until something can come along and dislodge it - hopefully for good next time.

 

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