School’s Instagram Meme Account Acquires New Admins
Sylvie Koefoed-Nielsen, Reporter

  During September of this year, junior Renz O’Meara passed his school-famous Instagram account, @vhs_memes_ on to a new anonymous owner.
  Over the past few months, this account has become extremely popular among the school’s students — amassing over 360 followers, well over half of the school’s population.
  “I was super excited the first week when it got 36 followers,” O’Meara said. “I thought ‘that’s amazing!’ I never expected to get [around] 360.”
  O’Meara was inspired to create an account after watching several Instagram accounts for different groups, such as sports clubs or classes around the school. O’Meara wanted his account to cover all sorts of student experiences at the school.
  “I talked to my friends about making a meme account for the school, but they all said ‘Renz, that’s dumb!’” O’Meara said. “So I was like, ‘You know what? I’ll do it myself!’”
  O’Meara created memes that focused on school events that he thought would be humorous for the students and steered away from direct attacks, taking on more of a social commentary role.
  “There’s really mean ones [that people have sent me]. I [would] absolutely not post those,” O’Meara said.
  O’Meara is proud of the positive response his memes have gotten and is genuinely enthusiastic about his creations.
  However, the growth in popularity of the page came at a cost. Soon, too many people knew that O’Meara was the admin — something that had initially been a secret.
  “[I’d] post something that [went] too far, and everybody [knew] it was me,” O’Meara said. “Mr. Rock [once] went up to me and said, ‘Wow, I heard you have some pretty good memes.’”
  However, O’Meara did not want to end the meme account. It had become so popular among the school’s community that ending the account completely would be too disappointing for the student body.
  “I talked to a few of my funny friends and gave them access [to the account],” O’Meara said.
  The decision to pass over the account to an anonymous admin seemed to O’Meara like the best way to keep the project fun, without matters being complicated by everyone knowing who the owner was.
  However, this decision caused controversy. Many of the account’s loyal followers didn’t appreciate the new content on the account and went so far as to create the hashtag #bringbackrenz.
  O’Meara responded to the complaints by the only way that seemed appropriate. He made a meme about it.
  This initial backlash led to O’Meara and the new owners opting for a collaborative effort on much of the content posted on the account. This allowed for a balance between the original content, and kept the account anonymous enough for O’Meara to feel protected. Either way, the memes are gaining a great deal of popularity.