In a day and age where so much of our lives transpire on social media, it’s no surprise that social media accounts making memes about the mundane have become so common and popular. Especially interesting to me, though, is the rise in meme accounts that cater to specific communities. I believe there’s more to this phenomenon than just simple jokes and mindless liking. Sure, these accounts are funny, and that definitely contributes to their growing follower counts, but they also appear to fulfill another purpose.
When you follow a meme account that focuses specifically on a community that you’re a part of, a sense of solidarity develops. When the account posts about something you’ve experienced and you see the amount of likes it has received or read the comments from other people in similar positions, it feels as though you’re being validated. The anonymous, faceless creator of the meme account has reached out, put an arm around your shoulder, and assured you that, hey, we’re all in this together.
I first noticed this myself when, as a ninth grader, I began following an Instagram account that made memes about my high school. Something would happen at school one day, something crazy or frustrating or otherwise noteworthy, and I would check the meme account to find my own thoughts about it echoed there. Complaints about the principle or the dress code or difficult exams, posts hyping up spirit week or poking fun at our rival school, etc. For a school that didn’t have a student-run newspaper, it was the closest I ever got to hearing the voices of my classmates and creating camaraderie on the basis of our shared experiences.
Now a freshman at Boston University, I continue to find entertainment alongside unexpected comfort in the form of these meme pages. Recently, an Instagram account called “ihatewarrentowers” was created. As a current resident of Warren Towers, I eagerly followed it in anticipation of that same feeling I’d been missing since I moved on from my high school’s meme page. I was not disappointed. Immediately, the account started posting about the same issues I had, the same daily struggles I complained about to friends and family, of small bathrooms and slow elevators and other such trivialities.
The success of this account seems to have been all the encouragement necessary for several others to be made. Since ihatewarrentowers’ first post, other accounts such as ihatebuwestcampus and girlbosstonu have appeared and garnered hundreds of followers, including myself. And of course, no list of BU-themed meme accounts would be complete without bu.affirmations, which I belatedly followed after finding the aforementioned accounts but which has been active since August and had a whopping 2,729 followers at the time this article was written, a true testament to the value these accounts have in their communities. Through them, students are finding acknowledgement in the form of relatable humor. And, in my case, that old sense of solidarity has quickly returned, now greater than ever.
On the outside, these meme pages may seem shallow; they’re just a way for a bunch of students to practice comedy and make pointless jokes, right? But just below the surface of these niche accounts lies a notion of community just as powerful as when I look out my window and see the city, and all its people, going about their lives the same way I do.
I find them to be important reminders that even here, even far from home, even when I’m in my room by myself, I’m not alone. None of us are.
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