VASQUEZ: Memes everywhere

I’m a huge fan of memes, and as a consequence have been laughing at them for years. They are the perfect combination of different kinds of humor – you find yourself granted the opportunities to make fun of things you do and consequently realize you’re not alone. I never thought, however, that they would become quite so popular. Up until a few days ago, I assumed that only the most avid users of sites such as Tumblr or Reddit could effectively create and appreciate the art of the meme. Sure, every once in a while, someone would share a particularly relevant one on the Facebook profile page, which would receive a few “likes” and laughs. But to bring the world of memes into the mainstream would be no easy feat.

The whole face of the Internet phenomenon soon changed. Enter BU Memes. Narrowing the images and humorous captions to a specific university sparked creativity and unified a large student body through its own idiosyncrasies. Absolutely brilliant.

It was an overnight explosion of activity. Before long, I was watching fellow students scroll down the BU Memes Facebook page instead of their own news feed. Popular memes, old memes and unknown memes began to circulate like wildfire. Soon, even real students at BU were beginning to be featured on the page. Meme creators shot to fame as their witty and accurate jokes were appreciated by hundreds of people. The takeover was unstoppable.

I quickly became swept up in the trend, unable to stop scrolling down and ignoring all other responsibilities. For the first time in all my years of meme appreciation, I even created and posted my own. Like the nerd I am, my infectious excitement knew no bounds each time I received a “like” notification on my computer screen.

As a veteran fan of the confusing meme domain, I was annoyed to no end when I saw one being used incorrectly. Like any skill, to meme is an art, and there are rules that need to be followed. The descriptions of each meme were clearly found on the websites that generated them. You would think it wouldn’t be that difficult to read through and find the most appropriate one. But alas, there will always be those who attempt to sidestep the rules.

Enter Campus Memes. Before long, friends from other universities began liking own college meme’s page. Finally, an entire website was created based solely on specific university memes. Ah, the moment we had all been waiting for. Now I can ignore the terrible ones and browse endlessly through the good ones, losing track of time and space.

People will hate on the trend all they want. The truth of the matter is that it helps unify a large community of students, not specifically to each college but to universities throughout the country. It’s also undeniably entertaining. Like all popular trends, it will eventually fade away into oblivion. Soon, we will look back at these images with the same fondness and nostalgia we have for Rate BU, Like-A-Little and even Sh— People Say videos. For right now, I will scroll through and laugh along with hundreds of other students all across the country and the world. I will happily sit back and watch as memes give people their fifteen minutes or “likes” of fame. I will sit back and watch the trend evolve and fade until it serves only as a reminder of our generation’s state and the grand influence the Internet has on all of our lives. But that’s just me looking at the bigger picture.

Dany Vasquez is a sophomore in the College of Communication and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at vasquezd@bu.edu