By snoadmin
If you visit Facebook regularly, which in this day and age is pretty much a guarantee, you most likely have noticed that our school has gone meme-crazy. The “Csulb memes” page on Facebook has over 2,600 likes and has received hundreds of submissions.
For those of you who are somehow still clueless, a meme is a picture or series of pictures that spreads from person to person online. When someone changes the words on the picture, the meme takes on a different meaning. There are thousands of memes in circulation, some of them more recognizable than others.
There’s the “college freshman” meme, which displays an eager looking young student who is unaware of the trials and tribulations ahead of him. Captions for these include “makes Mac n’ Cheese… sets of fire alarm” and “drinks 4Loko… dies.”
Another great college-related meme is the “lazy college senior.” This one shows a student casually sipping a beer. Captions include “notes for this class are posted on Beachboard… see you at midterms” and “can’t find a parking space… goes home.”
These memes have been a fun way to visually gauge our school spirit and pride for our campus. We are often considered a “commuter school” because so many students live far away, which causes a lack of community at the school. These memes are observations about our school that everyone can relate to, and that’s why they’re so popular. They also bring up issues and problems that every CSULB student has, like the constant burden of trying to connect to Beachnet.
Unfortunately, CSU Fullerton jumped on the meme bandwagon and just about ruined it. Their page started out looking similar to ours but quickly devolved into a mean-spirited flame war against CSULB. Since then, students from both schools have been “trolling” both pages, trying to one-up each other constantly.
The anti-Fullerton memes are just another display of our school pride, but after about a week of constant Fullerton-bashing it may become a bit tiresome. The page started as a way to make jokes about the little things unique to our campus, not an excuse to make jokes about another school.
Giving them more attention just makes it worse, it would actually be better if we started to ignore it and move on. Still, the memes about CSULB remain a great way for our campus’ 35,000+ students to show their spirit and bond over little things that every Long Beach student can relate to, like frat guys sitting outside The Nugget or the lack of outlets in the library.
Who knows how long CSULB memes will be around before people get tired of it and give up. Facebook fads often disappear as quickly as they pop up. Anybody who lived through the “post 25 facts about yourself” phase knows that.
For now, it’s a fun way to show school pride and make jokes about the little things that annoy us. Even when we’re griping about memes being posted incorrectly, or coming together to troll Fullerton, CSULB memes has provided procrastinating Long Beach students a chance to bond over the things that make our campus special.
