Giant ship stuck in Suez Canal goes viral – best memes & tweets

Charlotte Colombo

After a year in lockdown, it is safe to say that there isn’t much going on in our lives right now. This then might explain why, for the internet, the most exciting thing to happen at the moment is a massive cargo ship getting stuck in the Suez Canal in Egypt.

On Tuesday 23 March, a container ship known as the Ever Given made an unfortunate sideways maneuver in the narrow Suez Canal. As one of the largest container ships ever built, it’s a total of 1,312 feet long.

This has made it impossible for boats to pass through the Canal, which is actually a vital shipping route that accounts for 12% of all international trade. At the time of writing, the boat still remains stuck, is blocking hundreds of ships and leaving billions of dollars worth of commodities stranded.

With one long boat essentially causing an economic crisis, people on the internet can’t help but see the funny side – especially when a comically tiny bulldozer was sent to rescue the boat.

A lot of people saw it as an encapsulation of the craziness of the past year, so the internet got to work with memes. Some people related to the situation through TV and movie references:

Some users were inspired by ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’.
We’ve all been there.

Others took it as an opportunity to dunk on #GirlBoss Twitter and embarrassing Instagram infographics:

But most of all, people really felt that it captured the mood of the nation right now with the current health crisis, mental health our struggles to be productive:

RIP 2020.

It remains to be seen whether the Ever Given will get out of the Suez Canal, but it’s at least nice to know that we’re not the only ones in a tight spot this year.

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About The Author

Charlotte is a former Entertainment writer for Dexerto based in London. Putting her unspeakable amount of time online to good use, Charlotte's work focused on influencer culture, TikTok, Twitch and YouTube. She has written for other national UK publications like The Independent, Metro, iNews and Digital Spy.