“We Will Rebuild” is an old catchphrase making light of weather events or earthquakes that had very little impact on the poster’s life. These images appropriate the serious sentiments people express following natural disasters and may mock those who overreact when they were only hit by the very edge of a storm.
The meme is an ancient one, stretching back at least to 2011 and often features a photo of a white plastic outdoor furniture set with a single chair knocked over. Other images feature similarly minor damage and may be original or repeated.
On August 23, 2011, an earthquake struck the Piedmont region of the state of Virginia. Measured at a magnitude of 5.8 and classified as severe in intensity, people in several U.S. states and a couple of Canadian provinces felt the intraplate quake, breaking the record for impacting the most people in any earthquake originating in the U.S.
Thankfully, the quake and its aftershocks only resulted in minor injuries and zero deaths, as well as up to $300 million in damages. The event alarmed many people in a region not well-known for its earthquakes, and the resulting reactions likely prompted the creation of the meme.
On the same day, the first known version of the We Will Rebuild meme appeared on FunnyJunk. It showed the classic photo of the plastic furniture with the top caption reading “2011 VA Earthquake” and the bottom reading “We WILL Rebuild.”
This photo first showed up online on June 25, 2010 on a Flickr forum discussion about photographic natural disasters. User kastytis posted it with a comment about receiving it from a friend and saying it “shows the devastation from the earthquake” that occurred in Canada around that time.
The meme spread across early social media platforms like Reddit. As one of the most enduring formats, it appeared again and again with every noticeable natural disaster that occurred anywhere that people enjoy memes.
In a large nation like the U.S., residents have different experiences with weather and similar events depending on where they live. A 5.8 magnitude earthquake isn't impressive to people who live on the West coast, where there are multiple volatile fault lines covering highly populated areas.
It's not uncommon for those from areas where a certain type of natural event is common and/or severe to mock those who are struggling to deal with the same type of thing that's rare for them but may be significantly milder. Virginians were shocked and alarmed about the 2011 quake because they weren't used to it, and some Californians made fun.
On October 8, 2024, a category 5 hurricane named Milton made landfall in Florida. It followed just days after the devastation of Hurricane Helene, compounding the impacts and damage of the first.
While this disaster is far from mild by any standards, possibly being one of the most destructive storms in U.S. history, the "we will rebuild" meme reemerged, as predictable as record-breaking weather events during a climate crisis.
Some posted these memes to make light of relatively mild bad weather far away from Milton's path, while others seemed to be posting them from the West coast of Florida. Sometimes all you can do is laugh.
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