Those of us who couldn’t stay away from their phones this holiday season were likely inundated with memes about Netflix’s Bird Box, a dystopian film that few would have predicted would inspire quite so many memes.
gonna watch Bird Box just to understand the memes… y’all won
— JuanPa (@jpbrammer) December 26, 2018
While Bird Box was released on Dec. 21, during a week when many were trapped at home with their families, some on Twitter have speculated that this viral phenomenon may not have started out quite so grassroots.
netflix is using dozens of fake accounts with suspiciously low tweet/follower counts to seed twitter with viral memes about their movie bird box https://t.co/4aHkJ4qrWq
— hollywood babylon (@samiswine) December 28, 2018
I was kind of shocked after looking for my Bird Box review on friday to see the zone so flooded with memes… almost as if they had been pre-made, waiting in a folder on an intern’s computer… ready to launch at 2:00AM ET
— Emily Yoshida (@emilyyoshida) December 28, 2018
One strain of the Bird Box phenomenon you may have seen on social media is the “the lady from bird box” meme, which started after one Twitter user referred to star Sandra Bullock as the lady from that Netflix movie.
How old am I that Sandra Bullock has become “the lady from bird box” https://t.co/4WtN5uUvu1
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) December 26, 2018
The lady from bird box looks like MJ pic.twitter.com/ijBCBvsf0c
— A (@aaron_delara) December 26, 2018
Fans reacted, as expected, by listing (and GIF-ing) some of the Academy Award winner’s most famous roles. BuzzFeed also responded with a post titled “Dear World, Sandra Bullock Is So Much More Than ‘The Lady from Bird Box.’”
The original tweet in question, however, comes from an account with just 20 tweets to date, most of which were made after “the lady from bird box” went viral. There’s something perhaps a bit suspect about just how effectively the ‘90s nostalgia, “kids these days” Gen Z-shaming and GIF-friendly star appreciation of the “lady from bird box” meme tap into social media engagement.
Perhaps it’s just that lots of bored people stuck at home just decided to catch the Netflix film Bird Box this holiday season, but it’s worth taking a peep into why these memes have taken off so rapidly.