Melissa HerreraFollow

Date Collected

Fall 11-2017

Place item was collected

Logan, Utah

Informant

Myself

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

My name is Melissa Herrera and I am a Junior at Utah State University. Majoring in Animal, Dairy, and Veterinary Science (ADVS). I was born in Anaheim, California, but moved to Logan, Utah, when I was nine years old. Needless to say, choosing to attend USU was an easy choice. I work as a Veterinary Technician (Not Certified), and I am a member of Alpha Chi Omega, Beta Xi chapter here at USU. When bored or lying around, you will find me on my phone scrolling through Facebook, iFunny App, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.

Context

While skimming through my Facebook Newsfeed some time ago, I was on my phone and likely just hanging out with some Alpha Chi sisters in the sorority house. Student Problems is a Facebook page I follow, which post memes about any problem a student has come by at some point while attending college. I direct messaged the page, in hopes to get an interview, but did not receive a message back. After looking deeper Student Problems has another page called The SP University of Memes, which allows anyone to post any memes related to the topic. Making it very likely that the page did not create the meme, but instead copied from the second pages feed. There are two different aspects of this meme. The first is a new meme known as “Salt Bae”. On January 7th, 2017, Gökçe uploaded a video of himself carving a steak and sprinkling salt over his forearm on to the meat (shown below). Within 48 hours, the video gained over 2.4 million views and 8,700 comments (knowyourmeme.com). The caption that is typically used for this meme is in reference to adding a little something extra to make it seem special or to stand out from the rest. Here’s a typical Salt Bae meme: The connotation in the meme above is that when adding “proficient in Microsoft Office” to your resume it helps it stand out from the rest. This is the typical style of “salt bae”— adding something to make it seem extravagant. The second reference being used in this meme was made obvious by Shakespeare’s head is photoshopped onto SB. For those who do not know, Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor during the Elizabethan era of England. Known throughout the world for his most famous plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, A Midnights Summers Dream, etc. Due to his writing style and success in the English language, he is seen as being a formal and educated writer. It is a good representation of how college students add little fancy words (thus, henceforth furthermore etc.) into their papers in hopes to make it sound formal, educated and to impress their professors.

Texture

The general feel for this meme is humorous, though I suppose there is a hint of familiarity, in that as a student, I have added “fancy words” in hopes to get a better grade on my paper by making it appear more formal or special compared to the rest. I could not get a hold of the owner of the page who posted the meme. However, by posting a meme like this on a page that is largely followed by college students on Facebook, it shows that a majority of students and perhaps anyone who is writing an educational paper has done this before. Below are a few more examples of the same concept of adding things to a paper to make it stand out or meet a requirement.

Course

Introduction to Folklore,English 2210

Instructor

Dr. Lynne McNeill

Semester and year

Fall 2017

Theme

G9: Internet Memes

EAD Number

5.38

Download

Share

COinS