Coronavirus collabs: the social media games entertaining the masses – and bringing us together

What’s quarantine without a fun way to pass the time? As pandemic-induced social distancing pushes more and more people to the solitude of the home, self-isolators have started coming up with ways to entertain themselves, their neighbours and strangers around the world through social media.

For cinemagoers who miss the collective experience of the silver screen – the phones bleeping in quiet scenes, that guy behind you munching popcorn in your ear and, perhaps more particularly, the delight of dissecting the film with friends afterwards – the UK actor Brett Goldstein has started up a film club on Twitter.

Under the hashtag #IsolationFilmClub, a movie is selected every day by a nominated user, “anyone who wants to watch it can, and then talk about it using the hashtag”, Goldstein said.

For those who want something a bit more active, there’s Big Kitchen Disco: a collaborative playlist coupled with a simultaneously solo household kitchen boogie, which kicked off with – naturally – Dancing On My Own by Robyn.

It’s Mardi Gras meets the Italian balcony musicians.

Or you could dance along to one of the many quarantine playlists being created. The actor Rita Wilson – who was diagnosed with coronavirus along with her husband Tom Hanks on Australia’s Gold Coast last week – collaborated with the public to produce Quarantunes, a 47-song set on Spotify including such classics as Locked Up by Akon, U Can’t Touch This by MC Hammer and I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor.

And since you’re dancing, why not couple it with a light show? After Sydney, Australia announced it was cancelling its annual aural and visual festival Vivid – known not just for the colourful light-art displays over landmarks throughout the CBD, but its live concert series – a DIY version has sprung up on Facebook.

“Get your own festive lights out on your balcony, switch over your lounge room bulbs to COLOUR. Get your self isolation pad LIT for our own makeshift DIY Vivid Australia,” the event page says.

Meanwhile over on Instagram, Australian musicians who are part of youth broadcaster Triple J’s emerging music program, Unearthed, have been covering each other’s songs.

Hauskey, the musician who started it, said he started doing it to stave off the feeling of being “useless” while stuck at home. With so many musicians having had gigs cancelled for the foreseeable future, “exposing my small audience to someone else’s music is one tiny way I can help out”, he said.

Hauskey covered Eluera; Eluera covered Shannen James. And the game goes on.

For those whose cathartic impulses tend towards the introspective, the Oregon illustrator Carson Ellis has started a Quarantine Art Club on Instagram, posting regular art prompts, challenges and tips in an attempt to help others entertain themselves or the other people in their household – particularly the youngsters.

“I’m thinking of ways that we can stay connected here through art,” she wrote in a post on Monday. “We’re all going to be more isolated than usual. Many of us just became unwitting homeschool teachers to our kids. Many of us will be home all alone for a while. Let’s keep busy. I’ll try to post assignments every day this week that you can do on your own or with your family. Let me know if you have drawing exercises you love and I’ll share them.”

More than 700 people responded to the first challenge: a self-portrait.

Ellis’s Quarantine Art Club is a more organised, visual art-focused version of the creative projects happening around the world under the hashtag #IsolationCreation, in which art-makers of all kinds are using the enforced downtime to make, bake, carve, collage and concoct their way through the crisis.