Many students have some sort of complaint about the university, and three USI students came together to put their complaints in “meme” form. John Siepierski, sophomore political science major, and students Janessa Sporales and Seth Green work together as administrators for the Facebook page, USI memes.
The Shield: When did you start the page, and where did you get the idea?
Siepierski: We started the page about three weeks ago, but I started with Janessa Sporales and Seth Green. All of us are pretty big Reddit users, and so we’re big fans of memes. The way I learned about universities having meme pages was actually because Reddit was complaining about how bad the memes are on them, but I thought maybe we could do a better job. Turns out there are a lot of other people out there who are fans of (memes), and now it’s turned into all of the content on (USI memes) is mostly generated by other users and not the original admins anymore.
The Shield: Do you monitor posts?
Siepierski: Usually we try to keep all posts as memes. If someone’s just posting some text comments, we’re usually going to delete it unless someone posts more memes as a response. I think we’ve only taken down one actual meme post before. It just seemed really hateful and directed towards one person. Whereas we think any criticism of the public figures, or public groups or the school are fair game. At the end of the day, it’s all just joking and good fun.
The Shield: What makes a good meme?
Siepierski: We like the memes to stick to the original format that the original meme was intended to be like. For instance, when you have the most interesting man in the world meme, I don’t always blank, but when I do, I blank, you need to follow the original format. We like to be original rather than just ripping off something like redditt, and we also like to be directly USI related, not just universities in general. And it has to be funny.
The Shield: What is the best part about running the page?
Siepierski: Just going on there everyday and seeing new posts. We were checking out other university’s meme pages, and I think ours is pretty good in comparison. As a matter of fact, right now, we’re planning on starting a meme war with IU. When it comes down to it, IU’s page is not very funny. I think IU students in general aren’t very funny.
The Shield: What is a meme war?
Siepierski: It’s basically where we trash eachother with memes.
The Shield: What do you have to say to people who say “You’re doing memes wrong.”?
Siepierski: We don’t do memes wrong. I will say that memes do evolve. For example , the scumbag Steve post was originally like the trashy friend you might have. and that turned into taking his hat and putting it on different people. I think someone did like a scumbag Linda Bennett one, about the tuition increase and her pay raise. So memes evolve, and maybe we can play a role on it. And we invite people to critique memes, and “like” the ones they like.
The Shield: What’s your favorite meme so far?
Siepierski: put picture here.
