Facebook memes hit TCU

The meme phenomenon that has swept universities and their social media sites made its way to TCU on Tuesday night.

Senior supply and value chain management and finance double major Amir Tafarroji created the TCU Memes Facebook  page Tuesday, which has gained more than 2,600 “likes” since.

Tafarroji said that after creating the site, he sent the link to five of his friends that “enjoyed that kind of material.” He also said that he chose the “suggestion option” that Facebook offers before going to bed.

“Next thing I know, I wake up in the morning and there’s 300 people already, and then 10 hours later, 1,000 people have joined. I literally only told five people,” Tafarroji said.

Tafarroji said that he had gotten the idea from a few of his friends that attend Baylor University who had developed a meme page. He said he knew it was a fairly new thing but had heard of meme pages on campuses such as the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M and Texas State.

Universities such as Stanford, Duke and Boston College also have meme sites so students can post their original memes.

According to merriam-webster.com, a meme is “an idea, behavior, style or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.”

Freshman business major Jamie D’Onofrio was the first TCU student to post a meme that he had created to the TCU Memes page. He described a meme as “a parody; basically of a variety of trending images where you have two statements: one above the picture and one below the picture making fun of whatever topic you chose. It could be a social norm or maybe a stereotype that goes on at TCU.”

D’Onofrio’s meme used the Dos Equis spokesperson, referred to as “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” and reads, “I don’t always eat at the BLUU, but when I do, I check for razor blades.”

“I was just satirizing the whole Skiff article [about a blade being found in a student’s meal],” D’Onofrio said.

Since D’Onofrio’s post, more than 400 photos have been added to the TCU Memes page.

Images mocking TCU parking, food served in the Brown-Lupton University Union, Greek life and residential life all have been added to the site from its members. Some images have garnered more than 150 “likes.”

Tafarroji said that anyone who “likes” the page has access to posting an image and that as the creator of the page he has authority to block whichever users he wants, but that has yet to be the case. He also included a disclaimer that reads, “Don’t take this too seriously. Also, please try to keep things generally TCU related.”

Tarfarroji also said that if he sees something inappropriate posted to the site, he plans to delete it.

“I don’t want to be the reason for people cyberbullying anyone else, so I’ll keep up with it as much as possible,” he said. “I think students are smart enough to make a good decision about what they post. I have faith in humanity still.”

As far as the future of TCU Memes, D’Onofrio said that while he was initially shocked at the growing rate of the site, he was not sure of how far it would go.

“I mean, obviously it can’t continue to grow exponentially, but I think that it will be popular for a while,” D’Onofrio said.