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School During The Coronavirus Lockdown

2020meme seriesdead

Published November 15, 2026

School During The Coronavirus Lockdown covers a run of jokes that filled Reddit, Twitter and Facebook in March 2020 when schools shut down and classes moved online. Posts about webcam lectures, muted mics and students tricking teachers into closing the video call piled up on r/dankmemes and r/PrequelMemes, with top submissions clearing 40,000 upvotes by mid-March.

covid 19 memes classroom memes prequel memes 2020 memes student life memes

Overview

Posts in the format tend to fall into two camps. Many are image macros or reaction GIFs that pair a familiar character, from a coughing General Grievous1 to Geralt of Rivia, with text about bad audio, students browsing in bed, or the move to webcam software. A separate batch takes the form of edited class screenshots, with teacher names, chat windows and student webcams played for laughs3.

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Humor in these posts usually works one of two angles. Students joke about enjoying the freedom of logging on from home, while a second thread targets teachers who fight with mute buttons, screen sharing or unfamiliar video calls. One popular variant centers on the ALT+F4 keyboard shortcut, which closes the active window on Windows, with students in an online class egging the instructor on to press it5.

Origin & Background

Platform
Reddit / Twitter / Facebook
Date
2020

Documented examples of the format began appearing on March 12th, 2020, the same week most U.S. and European schools announced closures to slow COVID-19. Redditor eelmor1138 uploaded one of the earliest known versions that day to r/PrequelMemes, using a still of General Grievous coughing paired with a caption about students returning from spring break to online classes. The post gathered more than 1,300 upvotes1.

The exact first meme using the online-class theme has not been identified4. Similar jokes appeared on r/dankmemes and r/memes within hours, which made the switch to remote learning one of the first widely memed stories of the early COVID-19 outbreak.

How It Spread

The jokes moved quickly through dank-meme subreddits in mid-March. On the same March 12th as eelmor1138's upload, Redditor theholybork added a version to r/dankmemes that cleared nearly 40,000 upvotes and 100 comments3. By March 17th, user TomMcWeedy's ALT+F4 image on r/memes had been upvoted more than 55,000 times and awarded several times by other users5.

Twitter spread the theme over the same days. User Anime_Desutroyed_Me shared a reaction GIF on March 12th captioned around the idea that Coronavirus had moved classes online and students could now claim they had FaceTimed with a female classmate; the tweet drew 623 likes and 136 retweets6. Four days later, user Newtons Thug uploaded a second online-class gag that earned 116 likes and 11 retweets2.

The template reached Facebook through franchise pages as well. The Witcher Memes page photoshopped a surgical mask onto the Geralt's Fuck image, which collected close to 7,000 likes and more than 1,000 shares4.

Timeline

2020-03-12

Redditor eelmor1138 posted a coughing General Grievous image joking about online classes to r/PrequelMemes, one of the earliest documented versions of the format.

2020-03-12

Redditor theholybork uploaded a related online-class meme to r/dankmemes that cleared nearly 40,000 upvotes.

2020-03-12

Twitter user Anime_Desutroyed_Me shared a reaction GIF about online classes and FaceTime that drew 623 likes and 136 retweets.

2020-03-16

Twitter user Newtons Thug uploaded an online-class meme that earned 116 likes and 11 retweets.

2020-03-17

Redditor TomMcWeedy posted an ALT+F4 teacher-prank version to r/memes that topped 55,000 upvotes and received multiple Reddit awards.

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How to Use This Meme

To make one, people typically take a reaction image or franchise screenshot and layer caption text about an online class situation: a teacher failing to mute, a student still in bed, a webcam showing something embarrassing3. ALT+F4 gags, in which the joke is to convince an authority figure to hit the shortcut that closes their window, are a recurring beat5.

Frequently Asked Questions