Gina Marie Gruss (she/her) is a Floridian, a recent graduate of the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University, and a junior editor for Brink Literacy Project. She centralizes disabled, queer, and diverse narratives; her works have been featured by Amazon Prime Video, Mensa America, and Wattpad and have been published by FAU, Cliché Literary and Arts Journal, and F(r)iction Literary Journal. When not creating, she loves planning events, cooking and baking way too much food for said events, avoiding getting eaten by gators, and spoiling her two cats, Artemis and Apollo.
“What else can we do but look at the looming apocalypse and laugh? The World’s Ending, but at Least We Have Memes reflects on the humorous deflection of existential dread and the incoming apocalypse(s) through memes.
“‘Meme’ was initially coined by Richard Dawkins as ‘a unit of cultural information spread by imitation,’ but the term is now synonymous with short-lived jokes spread quickly in online spaces. They are intrinsically tied into social discourse, especially through the proliferation and democratization of social media and internet usage. They are art and, now, a large part of the cultural canon, changing daily, taking the internet by storm. They act as distraction, escape, and affirmation of shared values or beliefs.
“This work peels back the virtual curtain, reclaiming human agency in a world where we are seemingly powerless, by having myself as the central figure. It blurs the lines between virtual and physical reality through ‘glitches,’ meme overlays across the bed, and a simulated ‘clickbait’ woman’s body—a nude, dehumanized mannequin. It was born from my struggle of being disabled in the COVID-19 pandemic; isolation compounded on itself, the doom-scroll. It also reflects the ways I look for humor and information online as a queer, Latina woman who’s losing my rights. The red is a paradox, both a blistering red warning, something that is dangerous, leading to disinformation and fear—yet it doubles as warmth, and community, in an otherwise cold and isolating world.”
