Some time in the last week, a new Facebook group Johns Hopkins Memes went viral on the newsfeeds of many Hopkins students. The emergence of the new group is part of a larger Facebook trend: college students across the nation are creating "meme pages" to spread information about their school to others who attend.
Some might be asking, "what exactly is a meme?" A meme, pronounced "meem" and not "me-may" or "may-may," is simply a means of spreading any sort of information through the internet. Some of the most popular memes are accompanied by pictures — sometimes a cat or cute puppy, a character from a movie, a famous celebrity or even an ordinary person.
Some of the most popular memes on the internet include "lolcats," "rickrolling," "it's over 9000!," "this is SPARTA!," "good guy Greg" and "socially awkward penguin." Of course, the ingenuity of memes is varied — some immediately induce laughter and others are heartwarming, while others seem to be made by. . .well, lesser experienced internet surfers.
The Johns Hopkins Memes page in particular is quite interesting — there seems to be a number of memes that have received recent Facebook attention, for better or for worse. Some memes seem to receive an all around applause from the site's visitors.
Consider the "forever alone" meme. The picture is an example of a face from a rage comic drawing. Explaining the meme takes away its comic value, but, in any case, the picture points out that many Hopkins students are single and lonely: "the last time I touched a girl — PLAYFAIR!" The picture both posits what students feel is a reality on the Hopkins campus and, at the same time, references an event unique to Hopkins, one to which many students can relate.
Another striking example is the Xzibit meme, through which students express their frustration with Math professors at Johns Hopkins. Students believe that many of the professors in this department are unable to communicate effectively, especially since many aren't native English speakers. Xzibit's face is displayed with the text "Yo dawg, I heard you have trouble learning math, so I hired professors with thick accents so you can't understand while you don't understand," making use of the meme's "action is happening inside same action" motif.
Some memes are more controversial, however. An example is one student's use of the "lazy college senior," meme, (which is perhaps used incorrectly, by the way), to convey that at Hopkins, when someone's house is broken into, it's common behavior to kill the intruder.
Of course, this meme refers to the September 2009 break in on East University, where a Hopkins student used a samurai sword to maim the burglar before he could get away.
Some students feel as if this issue should not be taken lightly, like the meme suggests. Others think this is "trolling" behavior, where some post comments on Internet sites just to gain attention and cause "flame wars" or long and sometimes vituperative back-and-forth argument. Another controversial message, using the "college freshman" meme, pokes fun of first-time partiers at the Pike frat.
The message is that first-timers are likely to get roofied and then die. Of course, some students took offense at such a sensitive issue — students across the nation who have been date raped undergo severe trauma, and often, deal with depression and other serious mental health issues. So it's clear that either some of these memes lack tact, or that some are quick to offend — the ongoing debate between internet users who value free speech and those who value what they deem to be "responsible speech."
But what is interesting is that perhaps these memes contain messages that are important for students at Johns Hopkins. Maybe they contain snippets of criticism that students truly value. In that case, can memes be used to bring about change at Hopkins?
More importantly, what if students took this information and did something about it? It might make sense for students to gauge each other's needs and use that information to make a more appropriate presentation to administrators who could help facilitate change. Who knows?
Maybe we should take all the frustration on Facebook, and move it to administrators who could help. Or maybe I'm just being a Push it Somewhere Else Patrick.
