If you've been on the internet lately — which is one of the only things people who are social distancing and in isolation can do — then you would've noticed a new meme that's circulating. A bunch of videos of Italians in quarantine have been going around, with floors of people on balconies singing different pop songs.
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Katy Perry shared a video of fans singing "Roar." Madonna shared a video of Italian nationals singing "I Rise." And Cheryl also shared a since-deleted video of a whole neighborhood in Italy singing "Fight For This Love" as their pop anthem to get through the coronavirus crisis. But all these videos aren't actually real.
All these videos are from Italian neighborhoods singing in order to boost moral, but have been edited to have different audio. Fans are actually making these edits to meme their favorites in order to get them through this whole chaotic global pandemic.
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"People are now in the habit of going online and subconsciously reducing their psychic stress," Dr. Bartholomew said in an interview with PAPER. "In the past, people might have gone to church and prayed, whereas today in a more secular age, they go online and discuss their fears as a form of collective coping."
With these shared memes, the internet is also allowing people to go through this psychic stress together, and cope as a collective.
Perhaps, these Italian-neighborhood-singing-pop-songs memes can be misleading for the people who aren't in on this joke. So this is a PSA for all who have somehow been fooled, including the pop stars who fell for these memes: THEY AREN'T REAL!
See one of the actual videos, below:
Photo via Getty
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