Every college has one. It's usually titled using the "[insert descriptor] Memes for [insert descriptor] Teens" formula, and it comes in the form of a closed group on Facebook with some quirky inside-joke cover photo. The seemingly frivolous meme page that seems to exist for every college campus is actually, in my opinion, a vital part of the community ecosystem in a school.
Before making the treacherous and beautiful crossover from high school to college, I discovered that my social media transition was to be handled almost exclusively through Facebook. I, like many of my peers, was under the impression that nobody under the age of 40 still used the stone-age technology of Facebook, but apparently, you age nearly twenty years when you enter college. To be fair, this assessment does not seem all that inaccurate in hindsight, but I digress. After joining your perspective "X University Class of 20XX" Facebook group, you have officially taken the first step to actually being a part of your student body. Whether we realize it or not, this "Facebook gatekeeping" has a huge impact on the way we will communicate with our classmates as we enter our new community. Before even setting foot on campus, it is almost mandatory to set up your connections on Facebook, establishing that Facebook will be the primary means of communication in this mythical college land.
After this introduction, your eagerly scrolling young fingers will inevitably find the meme page of your college or university, often suggested by Facebook as a group you ought to join. Desperate to show up to your campus on the first day as an established member of the student body, you request to join this group. Thus begins your personal journey with the force that is the meme page. Even before the first day, the meme page provides an inside look into what they don't tell you about your school in the brochures- the secret rivalries, the constant griping, the weird inefficiencies of the administration, and of course, the exaggerated stereotypes of the student body.
What's fascinating is that the meme page has much more power than it lets on. As really the sole marketplace for the exchange of ideas between all students in a university, what you read on the Facebook meme page is setting the standard for the way you perceive your community. The meme pages take the imagined community of "all students at X University" and gives them a home to converse. While this does allow for a kind of solidarity that can bring students closer together, even when trash-talking a school, the ideas presented on a meme page represent fairly homogenous viewpoints of campus life- put out there by students that often belong to the most outspoken groups.
The meme page has the political power to sway opinions of so many students, and while they seem to be lawless lands consisting of countless memes about the trashy campus bar, they are actually highly regulated ecosystems where information exchanged between all students at a university is filtered through a small number of meme formats with universally agreed-upon implications.
Your meme page has the ability to control the collective thoughts of the student body, all through silly images with minimal text.
This shared virtual culture is so impactful in shaping real interactions between students. Before I even set foot on my campus, I knew exactly what to think about my college bar, my dining hall, and the kids in the business school. What does your meme page tell you?
