I’m standing behind the chapel, anxiously fidgeting with my phone as the wind whips around me. I’m already late, and I’m worried about how the next few minutes will play out. All of a sudden, a car stops in front of me. I look up, shocked when I recognize the person behind the wheel. The person inside quickly beckons me to the car. I hesitate for a moment, then take a deep breath and walk briskly to the passenger door. I open it, fling my backpack down on the floorboard and climb in. It’s time to get some answers from the mastermind behind UU Memes.
***
I had received the initial invitation exactly two weeks prior when UU Memes had messaged my personal Instagram account asking if I needed material for a Cardinal & Cream article and suggesting a “private one on one chat” between me and the admin team. I, of course, expressed my interest. A week later, they had messaged me back with a location, a time and three conditions: I could not have an audio recording, I could not tell anyone about the meeting beforehand and I could not reveal their identity or any clues about their identity.
It sounded super sketchy, and naturally, I was skeptical. I needed more details and to know why they were contacting me.
“You wrote the first article. It is only fitting that you write the final one as well,” their reply read.
It was tempting. I had written an investigative piece on the anonymous person behind the mysterious Instagram account in the fall, and the thought of being armed with one of the best-kept Union secrets of all time was thrilling. After some careful thought, I agreed to meet with them and came up with a backup plan in case things went awry.
On meeting day, a last-minute location change threw me off (which I would later learn was to prevent me from stationing anyone to watch), but somehow I found myself waiting at a third location 30 minutes later.
***
The car begins moving immediately after I shut the door. My heart is pounding, even though I know the person driving. (To be fair, that was the only reason I chose to get in the car in the first place.)
“You’re UU Memes?” I ask.
“Surprised?” he says.
He tells me that we’re going to pick up his partner on another part of campus.
“We’re going off campus just in case,” he says. “Is that a problem?”
“I would prefer to stay on campus,” I say nervously.
“I was thinking like McDonald’s because I’m hungry, but we can stay on campus. We’ll talk to the others when we get them.”
“How many are there?” I ask.
“You’ll find out.”
My heart’s pounding faster. I imagine a gang of vengeful meme administrators holding me captive, or worse.
“I apologize for all of the vagueness. To be fair, the vagueness was so that you wouldn’t station people to watch in a way that’s not pleasing to us… However, I think I can trust you.”
I swallow the lump in my throat.
“Everything okay? We were concerned when you weren’t on time.”
“Yeah, you know, I had schoolwork and I had to help a friend with a personal problem,” I say.
“I hope everything’s okay. UU Memes has no emotions, but I have emotions, and so does the other one.”
His increasingly cryptic remarks are starting to disconcert me.
“I like how nobody assumed it was a woman. Why couldn’t a woman run UU Memes? Everybody assumed it was a dude, they were right, but that didn’t make the assumption good. Could’ve been a woman.”
I laugh nervously.
“Did you know Orlando Bloom is 42?”
By this point, I’m thoroughly convinced that this person is an evil genius who’s getting enjoyment from messing with my head. Before I have a chance to respond, we reach the “pickup zone” and the other person behind UU Memes quickly hops into the back seat.
Formalities are dispensed, and since I’m already late to my next thing, we decide to stay on campus and park in a parking lot at an undisclosed location on campus. They apologize again for the sketchy circumstances surrounding our meeting.
“We had to operate with the assumption that you would at least tell your roommates. I hope you understand why we had to do this.”
“We had to cover all of our bases. We’ve already kept our identity for a semester-plus.”
With that, I fired off a list of questions and hoped for the best. What follows is my interview with the creators of UU Memes. I have chosen not to reveal their identities to protect my journalistic integrity. The driver has asked that he be identified as “Cream” and that the co-conspirator be identified as “Cardinal.”
***
What inspired you to start UU Memes?
Cream: “It was actually an idea I had, and it was a half-joke. I suggested to him, ‘Hey dude, what if we created a Union meme account?’ It was kinda like a half-joke in my mind. I didn’t think anything was going to happen. And he’s like ‘Nah, dude, that’s a great idea.’ So we did it. We never anticipated it becoming so big. I thought a hundred followers would be what we topped out at. I never imagined that it would become what it has.”
Cardinal: “We started out with some ideas for funny memes we could make about school. We didn’t really know how we could post them for people to see—”
Cream: “And I definitely didn’t want it to be associated with my name—”
Cardinal: “Yeah, we didn’t want it to be in our name because we could get flak back.”
Cream: “But now I feel like UU Memes has become enough of a beloved little pastime that I don’t think people would get too mad at us.”
Cardinal: “Maybe the Greeks… I made the memes, he had the ideas. We decided to make the page to see how far we could get. It was more of an on-the-side, just-for-fun thing. We didn’t anticipate it getting this big.”
Why keep your identity this big secret? Why go to such great lengths to preserve your anonymity?
Cream: “Because we were going to make some memes that… We were never going to be offensive – that was never our goal – but we did intend to poke fun at some of the weirder aspects of Union. So it was half we didn’t want the organizations we were poking at to get mad at us right away, and also partly because it was fun. Mostly it was to preserve anonymity to prevent prank retaliations for meme-ing people.”
Cardinal: “It’s been hard. No one’s gotten really close, per se, but—”
Cream: “More people know than you think, mostly not people who go here.”
Why was one of the admins kicked out?
Cream: “There was another person who became involved who was not part of the original formation but very early on became involved. At a later date, they decided that they had too much to do and the page took too much of their time, so we had them step down.”
Cardinal: “It was out of their own volition.”
Cream: “Yeah, we didn’t force them out. They actually asked the other two of us if they could step down, and we told them yes.”
What does the future look like for UU Memes?
Cream: “I have a perfect quote for this. As Kylo Ren said, ‘Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.’”
Me: “Meaning what?”
Cardinal: “We have plans.”
Cream: “That’s all I’m telling you. ‘Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.’ You’ll find out.”
Me: “So a new kind of meme or something unrelated or…?”
Cardinal: “Not related. This is completely different.”
Were you behind the email spam attack?
UU Memes: “That was not my doing. I was quite annoyed with that situation myself, although the students sent us some spicy memes about the event, good job UU.”
***
After the interview, I’m dropped off for the next event on my agenda. As soon as I’m inside the SUB, I breathe a sigh of relief. Being an “investigative journalist” is thrilling, yet nerve-wracking. Will UU Memes live on? I guess we’ll have to wait to find out.
Photo by Tamara Friesen
