Quarantine, Day 1 – Day 7

What’s in the picture

A yellow hero with sharp fangs and a tousled head, drawn after the cartoon, is pasted into a real photograph. He sits among pillows and a blanket, hugging bags of chips to himself (a large green “Party Size” bag of Lay’s and a red bag are visible), arms spread wide as if guarding his loot. His expression is offended and wary.

This is not a series of frames and not a comic: the collection holds one image, which in memes plays the role of the last link in the chain “day 1 — day 7.” In such a joke the first “days” usually show a put-together, energetic person, and this frame is the result.

Where this SpongeBob comes from

The primitive character appears in the episode “SB-129,” which first aired on December 31, 1999: in a scene of Squidward’s time travel, an ancient version of SpongeBob appears, with fangs and a loincloth. Sometimes he is called Spongegar or Primitive Sponge.

As a meme he appeared in 2015. Among the early examples is a Twitter post from March 17, 2015, in which the ancient character was set against modern behavior. Then people started pasting him into real photographs to show a “primitive” reaction to an everyday situation: shock, greed, fright. In the Russian-speaking internet he took hold as an image of a person who loses their civilized appearance.

Quarantine as context

In spring 2020 millions of people found themselves at home. In Russia the president declared a non-working week starting March 30, and in Moscow and other regions self-isolation was introduced. That is when jokes about “a week in quarantine” appeared: the first days are sport, languages and “finally reading” books, and by the end, the sofa, food and TV series.

The image of the primitive Sponge suits such a plot exactly: he no longer tries to look human, he simply guards his supplies. The “day 1 — day 7” format is easy to rework: you can show a perfectly tidy desk and the peak of chaos, a sports outfit and pajamas, a to-do list and a blank page.

Captions for the picture

Examples invented for this article. “Day 1: I’ll learn Spanish, start running, sort out the attic. Day 7:” and right away, the picture. The pause between the promises and the outcome does the whole job of the joke.

“My productivity on Monday and on Sunday”: two pictures, one of which shows a person at a laptop and the other this frame. “The fridge a week into isolation: I know where everything is here”: a caption about how a person finds resources where they did not expect them. “When they said you can only go out for groceries”: a joke about the minimal mission.

An additional nuance is scale. The same image works both for a week-long quarantine and for a two-day weekend: it is enough to change the numbers in the caption. The sharper the contrast between “day 1” and “day 7,” the funnier it is, since the joke holds on the gap between the promise and the result.

How to use the template

The meme is easiest to present in two steps: first the perfect plan or picture, then this frame. It works not only for quarantine: a vacation, sick leave, winter holidays, any situation where you promise yourself productivity.

“Mirror” captions also work well, where the character is not a weakness but a victory: “Weekends when I don’t answer anyone.” The main thing is not to drag out the intro: this image speaks for itself.