“Huntingtonumemes” Takes Over HU

Students at Huntington University started a meme page to commemorate all of the inside jokes among the Forester Nation. Since then, they’ve gained nearly 700 followers — and they’re still growing.

By Cory Dunivan, Contributor

“HU Students: HUNNINGTON Everyone else: HUN-TING-TON”

“Kevin Miller: We need to edit your stories
“Also Kevin Miller: I want to see all your pets. And I want to see all your families.”

“HU Email: Hardy Hall will be closed for 20/21 school year. In other news, graduation–
Hardy Hall residents: Now, wait just a darn minute.”

“When you haven’t been going to chapel lately…
“Jack Heller: I might have been going to prison when this happened.”

“Huntingtonumemes” is an anonymous page on the social media platform Instagram. The page was created on March 9 of 2019, and the first post was made on March 10. In just over a year, the meme page has acquired almost 700 followers. The goal of the page is to help ease stress through laughter. College campuses all over the country have their own meme accounts — Huntington University is just like the rest.

“Meme pages benefit people by having a good laugh,” said Kyle Van Dyn Hoven over an interview on Facebook Messenger. “I have over 25 million followers on social media, so I have a little more experience with it.”

Van Dyn Hoven is an admin of the Facebook meme page, “Best Memes.” The page started in September of 2019 and soon garnered 7,000 followers. Now the page has over 76,000 followers. “Best Memes” is just one of the several pages he runs.

“All it takes to run a successful page is to take advantage of something that people are organically searching for, which in this case is memes!” he said.

Some freshmen have a difficult time adjusting to college life. Either they get lost and don’t know what’s happening, or they have trouble connecting. “Huntingtonumemes” encourages students when they need to laugh or be in on the joke.

“The meme page is pretty dank,” said freshman Derek Harper in a telephone interview. “The page is one of the first things I followed when I got to campus because it helped me understand more than I would if I didn’t follow the page.”

The owner of “Huntingtonumemes,” who asked to remain anonymous, is a student at HU.

“I prefer to remain anonymous because it doesn’t ruin anyone’s perspective of me while I can remain an anonymous moderator of campus’s voice,” said the owner of the page over an Instagram interview. “I’ve had some hard DMs before, and then when I see the people in person, I am relieved to know they don’t know they had issues with me.”

Since it started, the page has been accepting and posting submissions. To send in a submission, all you need to do is create a meme and DM it to page.

“If I changed anything,” they said, “it would be to be a little more consistent about sorting through meme submissions because I’ll forget some that have to do for a specific event, like Olympiad, and not remember until November.”

During the week, “Huntingtonumemes” consistently uploads memes. As of Sunday, May 3, the page has 387 posts.

“You can always rely on the page to post something funny almost every day,” Harper said. “I’m glad that we have something like this on campus to lighten up the mood.”

Another goal for the page is to help make the campus a place where HU students can feel comfortable, cracking jokes about their common experiences living on campus and attending classes.

“Yes!” the owner said when asked if it was difficult to remain anonymous. “Whenever people talk about it, I just wanna say, ‘Hey that’s me!’ But I am glad.”

With the end of the year coming, no one knows whether the current owner will graduate or is passing the torch to someone else.

“There is already a replacement to run the page when the original owner graduates,” said the owner of the page. “I love HU and nothing is ever meant to have hard feelings. Smile, have a laugh, and never forget that Amy Johnson has emailed you about a package you have in the mailroom.”