Every red light revealed much the same — distracted driving amid chaos. At one point, a woman peeling an orange arrived at a red light, and another driver was texting as a man with a mohawk rushed his dachshund across the wide intersection. A quarter-mile back, a police cruiser tried to weave through the knotted cars, its siren competing with honking horns and Roman Catholic hymns flowing from a church at the corner.

Defying it all, a homeless man slept in the median.

A few lights later, a taxi broke down in the right lane, further complicating the mess. A man selling gum pushed the car out of the way, though it took a while because of the traffic. “Foreigners are always asking me to go faster,” said the driver, Roberto García, 40. “It’s just not possible.”

He said he had just come from Aragon, a neighborhood about five miles away, though he insisted it had to be triple that distance: “It took me 40 minutes to get here,” he said. “It should have taken 10.”

Asked what taxi drivers do when stuck in traffic, Mr. García said they simply look for fares. But many others look at themselves. Instagram is full of self-portraits, or “selfies,” from people stuck in Mexico City traffic.

Vimeo and YouTube reveal broader signs of creativity. Humor is inevitable — for example, the cartoon of a man struggling to convince himself he is progressing in stopped traffic — but there is also music, some of it good. Indeed, if there is a benefit to the choking helplessness of traffic here, it may be the clip of Jenny and the Mexicats jamming in their van a few months ago.