Judas on Zoom

In many ways, we are all our own best source of humor, racked with anxiety as we sit cloistered at home, surrounded by either too few people or too many. With little contact with the outside world beyond our smartphones, our jokey coronavirus memes and videos are like the S.O.S. messages that a bearded castaway fashions in the sand with rocks and seashells.

So far, quarantine humor tends to revolve around the same topics: overeating, marital bickering, sex (either too much or too little) and binge drinking.

“Your quarantine alcoholic name is your first name followed by your last name,” reads one meme recently posted to a private Facebook group moderated by Lori Day, an educational psychologist and consultant in Newburyport, Mass., devoted to pandemic-themed videos and memes. Others show Jesus conducting the Last Supper via Zoom (“Judas, you on?"), or pleas for people to wash their hands because “Covid-19 doesn’t kill itself … just like Epstein.”

“It’s the kind of edgy humor people don’t feel comfortable putting on their own Facebook wall, for the risk of having their parents say, ‘How could you?’” Ms. Day, 56, said.

Tasteless or not, virus jokes provide her a fleeting distraction, and a needed smile, as the pandemic has put her life — and consulting business — on hold. “It’s very similar to the feeling I get looking at baby animals online, which is another thing I dose myself liberally with these days,” Ms. Day said.

The same goes for other members of the group. Some members are ill with Covid-19. “They’re thanking me from their beds,” she said. “They’re thanking me from their hospital rooms.”