Community and Catharsis: Meme Page Admins on the Comfort of Making Content
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Meme page admins are the unsung heroes of the internet, spending their days thinking up endless iterations of the same meme format and sifting through the infinite pool of internet content. Unpaid and often anonymous, the people behind these accounts are just in it for the meme-making process. Now that algorithms shepherd similar internet users together, meme page admins have become overseers of massive digital communities. The internet has splintered off into hyper-niche communities that bond over shared offline experiences and have no problem sharing their innermost feelings with each other.
Struggling with staying sane in this modern hellscape, embarking on your journey to spiritual enlightenment, or dealing with toxic family dynamics? There’s a meme for that. Take the absurdist feed of seasoned shitposter @joan.of.arca: “that feeling when you feel like you can never repay your mum for the sacrifices she made for you” over a Lana Del Rey selfie, next to Mia Goth frolicking in a field with the caption, “used a pencil today”.
The admins behind meme pages aren’t alone in their inclination to overshare online – just look at our tendency of treating our TikTok accounts, finstas, and Close Friends stories like our closest confidantes. The urge to turn our offline struggles into funny content isn’t uncommon, nor is that necessarily a bad thing. Our offline reality is hard enough, so we might as well have a laugh about it.
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“Although a lot of my memes revolve around pop culture, I treat my account like a diary. Except instead of the journal I stash under my mattress it’s bite-size excerpts of my life shared to over a hundred thousand people,” says Sophie Browning, the 21-year-old admin behind @joan.of.arca. When Sophie started making memes about her own feelings and interests for fun, she found herself in front of an audience. “My reason for making memes is still the same now, to express myself and create or curate things that resonate with others.”
Looking at meme making and curating as an expressive process poses the question: are memes art? The benefits of making traditional art are well documented: making art can activate reward pathways and lower anxiety levels. If memes can boast the same benefits, suddenly the endless duties of a meme page admin seem more rewarding.
“If art involves inciting an emotional response in the viewer, I think that memes absolutely fit that description,” Sophie says. “Broadcasting our emotions online allows us to externalise them and seek comfort and reassurance from others who can relate. My memes are so hyper specific; it’s cathartic to see lots of comments from people who find my content relatable.”
When it comes to finding community in hyper-specificity, no one knows it better than the admin behind Catholic meme page @ineedgodineverymomentofmylive, Kyle Hide. “The internet has opened up space for people to express themselves and find connection over even the smallest of life experiences,” he says. “It really shows how we aren’t just individuals, but part of something collective.” The page has become a haven for people reconciling their complex past with religion – sounds niche, but the account has amassed a community of 128k followers.
“Sometimes, it’s just easier to vent into the digital void than to your colleagues at the water cooler.”
“The language of the page is purposefully vague to show the different positions and thoughts that can be had about spirituality,” Kyle says. Unlike other forms of expression designed to be understood by the masses, the visual language of memes layer cultural references, iconography, and terminally online language, making them the optimal vessel to relay nuanced emotions and experiences to precise audiences.
“For a long time, people were asking, is this for real? Do you actually believe in God? Are you being blasphemous? We blur the line between irony and sincerity, and I think the culture is catching up to that now.”
On the other side of the spirituality spectrum, @magikmemes community of 242k followers are the tarot reading, nature loving ‘witches’ of Gen Z. The page composes its eerie captions – “I have to go ponder at the swamp about this”, “shitposting comes to me in divine visions” and “what seeing the signs and patterns does to a mf” – over suitably unearthly backdrops.
Raven Grimes, admin of @magikmemes, uses her page to externalise the aspects of her interior world that don’t easily slot into offline conversation. Sometimes, it’s just easier to vent into the digital void than to your colleagues at the water cooler. “I struggle to talk about myself and things I go through because I feel unprompted, but making and sharing memes has been an easier way to express myself,” she says. “It can be a way to express how you’re feeling without having to directly communicate it to anyone specific. To feel a mutual understanding when I make a silly meme that still contains vulnerability is a beautiful feeling.”
As a therapeutic process of expression, memes have the advantages of being accessible and cathartic, but if the idea of packaging your interior life into digital content feels a bit bleak, you’re not alone. “Channelling our emotions into content can be freeing, sometimes it’s just good to get it out of your head. But on the internet, where nuance and empathy go to die, you risk seeing your content reach an online space that will misunderstand or mock you. You might even find yourself an unwilling part of the weekly hyper-online discourse.” says Sophie.
“It can be overwhelming to post online as it does require vulnerability and social energy,” says Raven. “It can feel stressful to subject ourselves to being perceived, but then again doing so can help you find community.”
Words: Mimi Francis
