With the internet evolving almost every minute, there comes an assortment of trends that spread quickly. My freshman year of high school (which was 2011) was when I first saw a trend spread like wildfire and never die- memes. For those who don’t know what a meme is, the Google definition says that it is “A humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.” Therefore, when I found out that there was a GU memes page, I decided to give it a look. The first meme I viewed was of the button that plays music by the Jesus statue and other memes that were about the campus and people on campus. I wanted to get a deeper look into the page and talk to the person who runs it. By the request of the interviewee, they would like to stay anonymous due to the fact that they want students to have no idea who runs the page.
So with the rise of memes coming around 2011, Greenville University Memes, originally called Greenville College Memes, was started in 2012 with the successes of Success Kid and Bad Luck Brian. “The year is 2012. Success Kid and Bad Luck Brian rule the meme landscape. But little did the world know the college meme page that would rise like the phoenix out of this environment. GU Memes, formerly known as GC Memes, was meant to be created for a small group of friends but it quickly grew into a campus-wide digital community.” Just like how the internet is changing every second, so is the page throughout the years. The interviewee stated that with the organization of the page ispassed down to different students as people graduate. “Over these transitions, we have seen the old formats slowly morph into new ones. We traded our impact font for Drake memes and adapted to the mainstream meme culture.”
Just like anything in life, you’re going to have your challenges and you are going to try to work past them. But the only real challenge that the page has had is when they got in a meme war with Spring Arbor University’s memes page last year. “Spring Arbor’s meme page began to attack GU Memes calling us “uncultured, racist, and bad at football.” Our meme page decided to retaliate and started an all out war. As the memes got spicier we decided to be the bigger meme page and pulled a Pusha T and withheld our worst blow to them and called it a truce. Even with challenges coming in different forms, putting out content has always been easy and as a page they are always putting out the best content they have.
With the page flourishing right now and no signs of slowing down, the interviewee sees that the future is bright. They say that they couldn’t do this without the digital community and the great team they have. “GU Memes is always about that digital fellowship. We wouldn’t be here without that community and we know that nothing binds GU students together more than complaining about GU. So I just want to take a second to thank all of you out there who make up the wonderful meme community by submitting, sharing and liking. GU Memes isn’t one person, it is all of the people. So as long as the people of GU are on board, then GU Memes is forever.”
If you’re looking for a great meme you might as well go to Greenville University Memes on Facebook. Also, if you’re looking to creat your own memes, GU Memes is looking for new people to help create content. DM them for more details.
Media by Dylan Goodyear.
