Twitter votes Zootopia’s favorite sloth as the post-election meme we need

Despite many a good election worker's best efforts, it may be days (or longer) before the next President of the United States is decided — but for Zootopia’s Flash the sloth, it all might as well be happening in the blink of an eye. As Americans endlessly refresh their feeds while on the lookout for final voting tallies from several key swing states, impatience at the drip-drip pace of new updates is rocketing one of Disney’s slowest-moving animated bureaucrats to social-media stardom.

Finding a parallel between the hurry-up-and-wait outlook of Zootopia’s languid DMV pencil-pusher and the cautious, deliberate pace of states' vote tallying, one Twitter user with a sense of humor decided to make Flash the unofficial social-media mascot for the 2020 post-election waiting game. It must’ve been an inspired catch, because the idea caught fire, with one Instagram hit rocketing the adorable Flash to newfound celebrity status — and more than a million likes — in only a day’s time.

With the eyes of the world watching as ballot counters in numerous uncalled states carefully process the election returns, Flash would probably be the first (well, maybe the last) to tell you that slow and steady wins the race. Sure, he might’ve been the most chilled-out sloth ever to preside over an all-sloth staff at Zootopia’s DMV (that’s Department of Mammal Vehicles) — but no one can say he didn’t take his job seriously, either.

Voiced by Raymond S. Persi in the 2016 film, Flash ended up becoming one of the movie’s early breakout stars, after dragging fans through waves of laughter when the film’s trailer debuted in theaters. While he wasn’t even a main character, his molasses-smooth approach to getting around to the task at hand struck a chord that pretty much positioned him, somewhere down the road, for a future career as a meme in search of a topic.

With the election still in the balance while the counters finish their job, these pins-and-needles days of waiting may feel painfully slow for voters. But even if people are split over whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden should be the one to take the White House, thanks to social media, at least we can agree on the perfect post-election mascot to get us past the finish line.