You remember that GIF of Dwight Schrute from “The Office” saying: “There’s too many people in this world. We need a new plague”? Yeah, that one. And remember how many people in 2014 would repost it, followed by some shitty screenshot of a tumblr post about being late to your own wedding because of chicken nuggets? Reports have been coming in that since the outbreak of COVID-19 and the effects of the ever rising death rate, these people have now expressed embarrassment and regret.

“I mean, it was funny,” Samantha Giles, a long-time fan of “The Office”, said. “It was just something you did back then, like spamming tumblr posts with Supernatural GIFs, even though the discussion was about something else entirely. It was new and exciting. You saw that and thought, ‘Who would ever say this xD,’ and then you’d reblog it. But now that people are actually dying it’s just, I don’t know, not that funny anymore. ”

“I used to think, ‘This is SO something I would say!'” Kirby Parker said. “I always considered myself the Dwight of my friend group. I’d say the funniest, rudest and most spontaneous things ever. But now, I don’t know. My mom’s been diagnosed with COVID-19 and is currently battling for her life. I just can’t watch that episode anymore. When I reposted that, I never meant for the plague to affect someone I knew and loved, just everyone else.”

Formal apologies regarding the GIF have been issued en masse on social media from people like Giles and Parker, who attribute their past reposts to “lapses in judgment.” 

“That joke didn’t age well,” Giles said. “But we couldn’t have predicted a pandemic to occur during our lifetime, so all this criticism is unfair.”

 I believe that we are being too harsh on them. After all, is there any joke from “The Office” that has aged well? But I will concede with the critics on this; the joke wasn’t funny and was in poor taste, just like the show.