A ‘Fresher’ Perspective: A New Form of Procrastination
by Jessica Tresadern
You know that there are certain events in the history of man that are revolutionary, that change everything? The sort of event that is so huge that you just cannot imagine a time in which it hadn’t occurred? I’m thinking of events such as industrialisation, the suffragette movement, increased transport varieties and, of course, the rapid popularisation of the internet, and I think that there’s something occurring right now which should be added to that list. For those of you yet to guess what I mean, I am referring to the sudden explosion of university-themed memes.
Now, I have been aware of memes for quite some time (because I spend too much time on the internet laughing at them) but I had yet to see them reach so much attention from people on Facebook. I am one of those awful people who uses memes in real life conversation all the time, but until a few days ago, I received blank reactions from many of my friends (one person genuinely thought I was speaking Welsh). But this week I was innocently browsing my Facebook news feed (not stalking, I swear) and found that a lot of my friends had ‘liked’ their university’s meme page. Needless to say, I immediately searched for a Durham one and voila, there it was. “I’ll just have a quick browse through to see if they’re using the memes correctly”, I innocently thought to myself as I started from the earliest posts…
…and that was the beginning of my newest form of procrastination. I just can’t stop checking the page every half an hour. Because people can generate their own and submit them, it is updated fairly frequently. And my goodness, some of them are comedy gold. “One does not simply walk into Castle bar”- instant like for Boromir. “Oh my God Karen, you can’t just ask someone why they go to Stockton”-instant like for Mean Girls reference. “Lost in Loveshack. Better drink my own piss”-instant like for Bear Grylls’ face. I have liked so many of them now that people may get the impression that I do nothing but sit at my laptop and laugh at clever memes. (Worryingly, they may be right.)Every time I think I’m growing sick of seeing a Durham meme appearing on my news feed every 5 minutes, a truly fantastic one appears (usually making a dig at those Hatfielders) and my painful obsession is reignited.
As I’m writing this, our meme page has 3199 likes. I am not pleased with this. We need to get more people hooked on them – if only so that I can justify to myself that they are not a complete waste of my time. We need to catch up with the other university meme pages. WE CAN DO THIS. I cannot explain where the sudden popularity came from, and it probably will grow tiresome when people have used up all the good ones, but I think we’re going to be seeing these for quite a while. I mean, if Justin Bieber can retain popularity to this day, then why shouldn’t our memes? Most of the memes have more personality than he does, so this ought to be more than just a flash-in-the-pan fad. Apparently, the world is going to end this year; I have come to the conclusion that it could be a meme overload that kills us all. Forget about the seven trumpets signalling the end, I think we’ve found a more silent killer.
