Meet the man of mystery behind @memesofconcordia
A curated selection of spicy Concordia memes delivered to your Instagram feed
Sept. 16, 2020, was a great day to be alive. Concordia Memes made its debut post—a tasteful SpongeBob meme about proctored exams and a commentary on how students use Chegg, a place for textbook rentals and online tutoring, to nudge their test scores up.
Staying anonymous with his camera turned off and his screen name set to “mmmm” on Zoom, the man behind the account chooses to let the memes do the talking—akin to critically acclaimed artists like Banksy.
“I like to make fun of other people’s programs, and I think it’s funny how they can’t attack back cause they don’t know what program I’m in,” he said.
After a friend from the University of Toronto sent him a meme from @uoftmemes, he searched for a Concordia version. After finding that all other Concordia meme accounts had long been abandoned, he got to cooking.
“Why not make one?” he asked himself. “And I did.”
In the account’s early days our meme Banksy hit a snag.
After following the university’s official account, he received a DM from them asking him to “cease and desist from any and all representations that are in any way associated with, affiliated with, partnered with, connected with, supported by or otherwise condoned by the University.” They also requested he stop using Concordia’s logo as the account’s profile picture.
He reimagined the logo to meet their request. “I rotated it,” he said, “and added two eyes so it looks like a smiley face.”
He also changed the account’s bio: “All schools mentioned are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual schools or universities is entirely coincidental.”
He creates a strong majority of the content he posts, with some help from follower submissions and meticulously assembled memes from friends.
Sometimes though, the submissions he receives miss the mark. “Some of them I’m not a huge fan of, but since it’s the beginning, sometimes I lack content and I just post them,” he said.
As he’s built a following, he’s started to curate the content more. “Now, I’m rejecting more memes,” he said. “I’ll laugh, I’ll appreciate them and say thank you, but that’s it.”
His first posts were about things he knew he could make fun of, like stereotypes about John Molson School of Business students and the difficulties of online classes.
To create his works of art, he uses Meme Generator Free and looks over the popular formats until something catches his eye.
If he came across a template that reminded him of Concordia, he’d use it. “It’s really natural,” he said. “You get a spark like, ‘Oh, this will work, that would be funny.’”
Now that he’s a few weeks into the game, he posted a callout to his story asking his followers to give him stereotypes for different majors.
Highlights include that physics majors don’t exist, computer science students are virgins, biochemistry majors are losers, Loyola students are disconnected from the world, and JMSB students are dicks. “That’s the basic one,” he said.
While his account is private for the time being, everyone is welcome to join the fold and roast JMSB students through tasteful and thought-provoking memes.
