Should I Send Celebrities Funny Memes Over Instabram
We've all been there: you're sitting on the bus when you catch a sneaky glimpse over the shoulder of the person sitting in front of you, taking in the contents of their Instagram scroll. Except, imagine if the account they were looking at was yours. Unlikely, right? Not if you're the owner of a huge Instagram meme page, posting in secret to a plethora of followers who have no idea about your real identity. That's the case for the owner of @LoveOfHuns, a British pop culture meme account with over 630,000 followers - who first spotted a stranger scrolling their page while in the theatre watching Kinky Boots.
"How weird," they muse, though they don't seem overly surprised. Maybe that's because strangers in public are small fry for an account that boasts Katy Perry as a fan. And we seem to be with Katy on that. Instagram meme accounts are everywhere, and most of us will follow at least one. They're big business; one of the earliest successful meme accounts, Daquan (16.7m followers), was sold in 2020 as part of Warner Music's $85 million purchase of IMGN Media (which owns the @Daquan account), according to reports from Forbes.
Their influence is also growing. More people follow The Archbishop of Banterbury on Instagram (3.7m) than follow Boris Johnson (1.5m). And while similar accounts started off by posting cat videos and viral moments, now they seem to be transitioning into news sources, providing updates on current affairs alongside TikTok challenges.
The trend makes sense. Cosmopolitan's 2021 influencer survey found that 70% of respondents said the pandemic had impacted who they followed, with news content among categories seeing a particularly big surge in demand. But finding information everywhere and from anyone has come with its own problems too. In January, Twitter account Politics For All, a "news aggregation service," was permanently banned, accused of distorting stories according to The Guardian.
So, who are the people running these huge accounts? And what's it like to manage that kind of unlikely influence?
The people behind the memes
Like many unexpected social media stars, @LoveOfHuns - who prefers to remain anonymous - started their account for fun while at university five years ago. Initially, "it was literally just for me, my housemates and friends at uni to enjoy similar pop culture humour," they tell Cosmopolitan UK. However, the memes and British celeb nostalgia resonated and "it just kept growing and growing."
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Scroll down @LoveOfHuns' feed, and you'll see trending TV and celeb moments mixed in with throwback Celebrity Big Brother and X Factor clips. The owner describes their account as "funny, silly, camp, trending," with their posts all under the umbrella of "Hun Culture". As for what Hun Culture actually is? "It's a mixture of noughties nostalgic pop culture," they explain. "But also, you could be a Hun, you can have Hun energy, like someone who just doesn't care." They catch themselves and add: "It's hard because you can have a boujie Hun like Nigella [Lawson], but then you can just have your day-to-day Hun... It's a very broad term. It can apply to many."
That's part of the brand's success story. Speculating on the reasons behind their huge following, @LoveOfHuns' owner tells me, "It feels quite inclusive... It's all the silly little jokes. You kind of feel like you're part of a group," continuing, "it's a niche side of the internet; people enjoy it and want to be part of the journey."
On Katy Perry, @LoveOfHuns notes the "random" and sporadic comments, and the even shouting the page out in one newspaper interview. "I actually stuck it on the fridge."
It's a similar story for 24-year-old Lucy, who runs news-focused New Zealand-based Instagram account @ShitYouShouldCareAbout (SYSCA) with her two best friends Ruby and Liv, now boasting over 3.6 million followers. When Ariana Grande followed, she knew things were going to change. She'd started the account in 2018 while at university doing media studies and international relations. "I was three years into my degree and sitting there thinking, 'Why do I still not understand any of the words that are being used?' … There was just nothing gripping." In a bid to create more digestible content around serious topics, Lucy took things into her own hands - creating SYSCA to cover world current affairs "using normal words and a bit of humour".
The initial idea sums up how SYSCA still looks today. As for the "shit" in question, "We're a big mix of pop culture, political events, world news, the internet, the new generation of tech and, like, Harry Styles," Lucy explains. SYSCA's current Instagram feed includes posts spanning information on the conflict in Ukraine, a tweet about Tamagotchis, their signature "mundane polls" (which way do you put your cutlery in the dishwasher?), as well as sporadic Styles pictures, thanks to Lucy being a huge fan. The brand started as a website, before Lucy decided to start putting content on Instagram too, at a time when "no one was really using it for information."
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Six months ago, the trio made SYSCA their full-time job, thanks to web series funding from the New Zealand government. "Now, we're on our own," Lucy says, with the brand making money from partnerships, their podcast and newsletter. Liv is in charge of design, Ruby does partnerships, and Lucy is CEO,writing all the content. "I'm like the voice. Well, the voice through pictures."
Ariana Grande's follow coincided with a string of world events around June 2020: Covid-19, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the US and New Zealand elections meant the page saw their numbers growing rapidly. "I remember when Ariana Grande started following us and sharing our shit, and then we got a million followers and I was just crippled with anxiety," says Lucy. "[We] were like, 'We can't even celebrate because the world is so scary. We've just gone from 300,000 to a million followers, and we need to actually sit back and learn how to deal with an audience of this size.'"
Since then, the likes of Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Dan Levy and Blake Lively have all interacted, while Lucy has interviewed fellow Kiwi Lorde for SYSCA's Culture Vulture podcast. The appeal is simple. "Celebrities are just like us [and], I'm assuming, they just want a fun way to read the news," she speculates.
A day in the life of an Instagram meme account
So, what does it take to actually run an Instagram account with huge numbers of followers? A lot, it turns out.
On top of Insta, SYSCA has a large focus on its daily morning newsletter, with over 40k subscribers. "I get up at 5am every morning and scour the news, and then make sure that we can all understand it," Lucy explains. She'll publish the newsletter by 7, then reply to emails before heading to the trio's office space at 9, where they'll discuss partnerships, work on content, and record and edit their two podcasts. Outside of work, she stays as offline as possible. "[Afterwards] I'm not on my phone that much for someone [whose] job is my job," Lucy continues, saying she tries to switch off at 5pm and "make sure that I'm not consuming anything."
Newsletter and harder news info posts aside, there's other serious business to get to - like SYSCA's daily 'mundane polls'. "Right now, my inboxes are just full of ideas like, 'Do you brush your teeth with warm or cold water?'" As well as audience contributions and news sites, Lucy's other post ideas come from Twitter, TikTok and "just being an extremely online person," (within the hours of the working day). "And also, having done this for about three years, I have just a really good gut instinct for what I like and what I know the audience will like. I just feel like we're all mates." Plus, Lucy's brothers chip in with sending memes too. While the long hours might sound gruelling, Lucy reiterates that working for herself makes all the difference. "You do twelve hour days because you're like, 'This is my baby and I will raise it,'" she jokes.
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For @LoveOfHuns, it's much less of a full-time job. "I love having a little scroll in the morning; Twitter's literally like my news - for pop culture and real life [stories] … And then I guess just seeing what everyone's talking about."
Among the trending topics, @LoveOfHuns' position as a comprehensive nostalgia library takes a lot of effort. "I've definitely got a weird amount of photos on my phone - like a worrying amount," they explain. "I've literally got a Hun folder … which I can always dig into." They make money from branded ads, competition and merch (t-shirts and phone cases) too, so long as the brand fits with the page.
The bigger worries
While there's fun involved, both page owners seem very conscious over their influence - acknowledging how Instagram has marked a shift in how people consume news content.
"Memes will sometimes be like news," says @LoveOfHuns. "It'll be like current affairs almost, but in a meme context. I think people can almost read the news through memes sometimes, which is absolutely ridiculous."
With that in mind, does Lucy feel a responsibility over what she's putting out to people?
"Yes," she jumps in immediately. "Oh my god, I feel the biggest responsibility. I take it so seriously."
Lucy has her own broader concerns about social media too, deciding to delete her own Instagram two years ago. "It was personally because otherwise I'd be spending so much time on Instagram," she explains, also referencing her own worries about "context collapse" on social media. "I do worry … about the flattening that happens on Instagram," she says. "You'll see your friend's wedding, a war happening somewhere, a cute dog, someone influencing you to buy teeth whitening, and then a new law that was just passed in the US - and you give them all the same amount of time and energy." @LoveOfHuns says it's up to readers: "I think it depends on the person; the resources are out there if you want to read the news properly... It's not the page's fault if whoever is reading it is using it as their main source of news."
Like Lucy (and myself included) many of us are actively trying to be on our phones less. While Gen Z are (like Lucy calls herself) "extremely online," they're also deleting social media and cutting down screen time in droves. According to a 2018 study reported in The Guardian, half of Gen Zers surveyed said they had quit or were considering quitting at least one social media platform. So where does that leave us?
"I sometimes get people emailing responding to my morning newsletter like, 'I just wish you could print this out and send it to me every morning. Why hasn't someone done that?' And I'm like, 'Bestie, that's a newspaper,'" Lucy jokes.
Of course, all of these concerns about social media are valid. But it's reassuring to hear that the people with platforms want to be responsible around what they're putting out - which can only be a good thing.
"You never want to offend anyone, you always want to be inclusive and make sure you're celebrating people and never hurting anyone's feelings," says @LoveOfHuns.
As for the future, SYSCA isn't going anywhere: "I like being like the one nice place that people can go on Instagram," Lucy says proudly. And, among a lot of scary and worrying posts, sometimes a Harry Styles meme might be just what we all need.
Follow @ShitYouShouldCareAbout and @LoveOfHuns on Instagram.
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Source: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/entertainment/a39188577/people-behind-instagram-meme-accounts/
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