Weird Facebook / Post-Ironic Facebook
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About
Weird Facebook, or Post-Ironic Facebook is a loose agglomeration of Facebook pages, also known as "Meme Pages," that create and distribute dank memes, often along a certain theme or topic. Many of these pages have become popular both because of their absurd humor, but also because of possible advantages given to the "Page" format in the Facebook algorithm.
Origin
It's unknown who invented the idea of creating pages on Facebook and using them to distribute dank memes. Before the page system on Facebook, users were creating humorous user groups; one article from 2008 records seven "weird" groups that had several thousand members,[6] and distributed humorous content on a theme. Facebook Pages were first launched in 2009; many of the earlier Weird Facebook pages were used in a manner similar to Tumblr, with simple image reposts that were not generated by any member or admin of the meme group.[3]
One of the earliest pages of this type was titled Going to MacDonalds for a salad roll is like going to a brothel for a hug, which began as a regular page, run by a person who used it to talk about his or her life, this page posted its first dank meme-style post in 2012;[2] the page now has over 350,000 followers, but ceased posting in late 2012. Another early example is Freddy YOLO, which posted for the first time in July of 2013,[7] and has since acquired over 111,000 followers as of 2016. The first post on that page, an image of outer space, received 28 likes, but recent posts generally receive over 1,000 likes each.
The term "Weird Facebook" was coined by a Daily Dot writer in July of 2014,[1] who wrote that the communities "shouldn't even exist." October 1st, 2015, a joke article by the offshoot website of an ironic meme group, called Best Stories Online, defined the community from the inside, writing. "Weird Facebook is a subculture of meme pages, secret groups, friend networks, and personalities."[4] The name was almost certainly adopted from the Weird Twitter subculture; however, while Weird Twitter was mostly made up of people who were exiled from the community of Something Awful, Weird Facebook meme groups also often have Tumblr or Instagram accounts on which they post the same content simultaneously.[5]
Spread
With the launch of Groups and Pages functionality in 2009, users immediately began creating communities that used the idea of assembling groups and communities as a joke. By 2014, The Daily Dot was able to catalogue 10 different Weird Facebook pages that all had more than 10,000 followers, and speculated that there were many more. The groups began to grow quickly in mid-to-late 2015; Freddy YOLO, which had more than 40,000 followers as of 2014, more than doubled in two years.
Other groups, like Stick Memes, which was founded in November of 2013, grew more slowly. In the beginning of its existence, Stick Memes received an average of 30-40 likes on each of its stick-themed meme images, which were original and tailored to the group's emphasis on stick-themed jokes. By 2016, Stick Memes has over 25,000 page followers, and it's average post receives several hundred likes.
One of the most popular Weird Facebook pages is Bernie Sanders' Dank Meme Stash, which was founded in 2015 to create and publish memes about the presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. As of March 2016, the group has almost 400,000 members, who not only post dank memes about Sanders but also use the group for general discussion about the presidential election.
Bernie Sanders is not the only public figure to have a Weird Facebook group that focuses on him. One group, Guy Fieri Memes, which has over 7,500 members, focuses only on memes about the famous chef. Other popular meme pages that could fall under the Weird Facebook categorization have philosophical themes; both Nihilist Memes (over 400,000 members) and The Philosopher's Meme (over 45,000 members) explore this territory.
On November 15, 2015 Venezuelan vlogger DrossRotzank uploaded a video list of the 7 most weird facebook pages by March, 2016 it has gained more than 3 million views.
Directory
Categorizing the spread of these types of meme groups is difficult, if not impossible. However, here is a list of many more notable members of the subculture, along with their membership statistics as of March 2016. (If you would like to add more to the list, please suggest them or request editorship.)
• Inbox (1) Makes Me Nervous – 482,800 members
• Sassy Socialist Memes – 139,000 members
• Eric's Creamy Memes For Depressing Teens – 115,000 members
• Ghetto ASS Spongebob MEMES – 98,000 members
• Shit Memes – 97,000 members
• I don't like shit, I don't go outside – 88,000 members
• ＬＳＤ： ＭｅｍｅＥｍｕｌａｔｏｒ – 85,000 members
• Zesty Memes – 79,000 members
• ShitpostBot 5000 – 73,000 members
• I play KORN to my DMT plants, smoke blunts all day & do sex stuff – 73,000 members
• Niggaz Still WILIN – 67,000 members
• Memes 'R' Us 2 – 55,000 members
• Special Meme Fresh – 53,000 members
• Check Dis Shit Out – 53,000 members
• The SAD Bible – 52,000 members
• I have crippling depression and share memes – 52,000 members
• Social Anxiety Disorder Memes – 52,000 members
• Exploding Fish Shitposting and Senseless Drivel, Inc. – 49,000 members
• Dream de la Meme – 48,000 members
• When hte meam is well executed – 47,000 members
• Slick sardonic banter – 42,000 members
• Lettuce Dog – 42,000 members
• Difficulty II – 42,000 members
• Kevin 3: In case of a Zuckmergency, break glass – 41,000 members
• C a И C E Я 脳疾患 4百20 – 41,000 members
• Life after the meme – 40,000 members
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Memes? – 40,000 members
• Spooki Scary Skeleton – 38,000 members
• Parmesan Memes – 37,000 members
• De de la La III – 37,000 members
• Poorly edited memes to be enjoyed ironically III – 36,000 members
• Gangster Popeye – 36,000 members
• Spicy Saddam Memes – 36,000 members
• Your Memes 貴方のミーム – 35,000 members
• Big "Nigga" Bird – 35,000 members
• I Have No Meme, and I Must Scream – 31,000 members
• Pretending to ride a dog but not hurting it just pretend – 30,500 members
• Diddy Kong pointing at an unknown object with his hat on backwards – 29,000 members
• Laughapalooza – 29,000 members
• Fun Silly Drawings for Fun Silly People Haha – 26,000 members
• Lock me up and throw away the memes – 21,000 members
• hTe Spaghetti – 21,000 members
• This is not a Meme Page – 20,000 members
• Memes that make you go 'What the heck' – 20,000 members
• Young Thugga La Meme – 19,000 members
• Steve Urkel memes – 17,000 members
• The Meme Man – 16,000 members
• V de la Sauce – 16,000 members
• Corrupted memes guaranteed to make you scream – 15,000 members
• Fresh Memes About the Mojave Desert and Other Delectable Cuisines – 15,000 members
• Post Ironic Memechartcore II: But Then WAS Graph – 15,000 members
• My life is shit so I post memes – 15,000 members
• Box de la Box – 15,000 members
• Creme De La Meme/CDLM – 14,000 members
• Dammit meme i hate u but da pussy game ridiculous – 14,000 members
• Sadboys MSN de la 最高悲しい Aesthetic creamy cheese memes – 13,000 members
• Ironic Memes for Edgy Teens – 13,000 members
• Memes that make you contemplate your existence – 10,000 members
• Museum of Modern Memes – 8,000 members
Censorship
On July 22nd, 2016, The Daily Dot[8] published an article detailing Facebook's mysterious crackdown on Weird Facebook pages, "including 'Cabbage Cat,' 'Gangster Popeye,' and, for a time, 'I play KORN to my DMT plants, smoke blunts all day & do sex stuff.'" John Trulli, the administrator of Cabbage Cat, speculated that Facebook took them down for their left-leaning bent. “On 99 percent of other pages they all repost things that are negative to minorities and women, and ours were supposed to be safe places for everyone,” he said, before going on to speculate that his macros making fun of white people led to his pages being banned.
“The last few posts I had were… about avocados being too spicy for Caucasians…the giant accounts that make jokes about black kids not having dads and stuff all get huge and get verified, but if you say avocados are spicy or white people prefer missionary position, it will get taken down.”
According to the article, Gangster Popeye's bannable offense was impersonating President Barack Obama.
#FreeTheMemes
#FreeTheMemes is an unofficial title given to a protest by various Weird Facebook pages against Facebook's fraudulent review policies and unfair unpublishing and takedown of pages. The protest began on August 11th, 2016, when various Facebook pages in the community changed their profile picture to have an inverted pink Facebook logo filter. An Imgur link to the filter was also included, with the post titled "Friday 2 p.m. CST use this overlay on your profile pic".
After the deadline rolled around, on August 12th, it was revealed by various meme pages that the profile picture filters were the initial stages of an act of protest against Facebook's review policies and community guidelines and the double standards that are not applied to verified pages. In an interview with The Daily Dot, a user going under the pseudonym Guillermo Thomas, an admin of former pages Creepy Old Dudes of Mattybraps and Mark Zuckerberg's Dead Kid Picture Stash, said:
"Pages like Tila Tequila and Tess Holiday, for instance, post objectionable content that is either never removed, or the pages never get unpublished. Tila Tequila posted multiple posts on Hitler's birthday in earnest tribute, and while the posts were removed, there was never any consequence." [9]
The various pages encouraged their user bases to submit complaints to the Federal Trade Commission about Facebook's fraudulent review policies, with the main points of the complaints being:
1. Facebook claims that content has been reviewed when it clearly isn't. Graphic gore and racial hate speech routinely remains after being reported, which any reasonable reviewer would catch.
2. Verified pages appear to operate under a different set of standards, contrary to the claims made by Facebook. Pages such as tila tequila and Tess holiday for example, post nudity and offensive content that is never unpublished.
3. Facebook's statements are fraudulent and meant to pacify consumers.
Pages such as Kevin 3, Colorful Ｍ ｅ ｍ ｅ ｓ, I play KORN to my DMT plants, smoke blunts all day & do sex stuff, Young Thugga La Meme and The SAD Bible have been confirmed to be participating among other pages.
Change.org Petition
On August 22nd, 2016, The MP Alliance created a Change.org online petition[10] urging Facebook's executives, namely Mark Zuckerberg, Mike Schroepfer and Chris Cox, to stop its "indiscriminatory and harmful" censorship of user-submitted content by improving its reporting system, which has garnered more than 320 signatures within the first month.
#Zuxit Blackout Protest
On September 16th, 2016, Luke Sousa launched a website under the domain MemeAlliance.org with a mission to stage a three-day blackout protest against Facebook's seemingly random and mass censorship of meme-themed pages. According to the website, more than 100 meme-themed Facebook pages with an aggregate following of 20 million users and likes have pledged to participate in the blackout protest, designated under the hashtag banner #Zuxit, from September 28th to September 31st.
Our hope is to expose and make transparent the reporting and deletion process on the world’s largest social network, and show how it contributes to the censorship methods of the future. Today we are announcing our next action, #Zuxit. After the abrupt deletion of many influential art and comedy pages from Facebook, we are frustrated and taking action. Our numerous meme pages will temporarily unpublish in a coordinated blackout.[12]
In addition to the mass participation from some of the most influential Facebook meme pages, Meme Alliance also encourages supporters of the #Zuxit campaign to show their solidarity by changing their profile pictures to the inverted pink Facebook logo, which was originally introduced through #FreeTheMemes, a similar protest that was staged in August 2016.
Since the announcement and commencement of the Zuxit, coverage fon the event has been posted to websites such as The Observer[13], The Daily Dot[16], Metro[14], and Fast Company[15].
Interview with Weird Facebook Admin "Kevin Smith"
3kole5: Can you introduce yourself to the site for those who may or may not know you, along with your page stats from the past if you can remember? Tell us some of your interests, and how do you feel about 2017 so far perhaps?
Kevin Smith: Well I go by Kevin Smith, originally I went by Kevin Jawbreaker, which was a reference to the character Kevin from Ed, Edd and Eddy, but around 2 years ago Facebook decided that wasn't a real name and forced me to change it.
I picked Smith for my last name because it was the first name that popped into my head. I am the founder of the meme/art/musing/current events page known as Kevin 3: In case of a Zuckmergency, break glass, more commonly referred to as Kevin 3 or simply K3. The page is called Kevin 3 because it is the 3rd incarnation of a series of Facebook pages curated by myself, the previous two are unrelated to the current Kevin 3 page.
The current Kevin 3 page, started on July of 2016, has over 100,000 fans, which has been a longtime goal coming. On average we reach 1-5 million people per week. I've owned 2 previous Kevin 3 pages, both have been taken down by Facebook for no reason, Facebook removes pages at their own discretion. The first Kevin 3 page had around 85K fans when it was removed, the second Kevin 3 page had 96K fans at the time of its removal.
2017 has started off pretty tumultuously with all the anti-trump protests. Without getting off on too much of a tangent I'll talk about our admin corp. Kevin 3 has admins from all over the world, US, Ireland, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand to name a few, we all come from different backgrounds and way of life, but the one constant between us all is that we all supported Trump throughout the primary season, and we all support Trump as president. However we do not consider Kevin 3 an alt right page, we post content from all ends of the political spectrum.
3K: What spurred the creation of the original Kevin/Kevin 3 page?
KS: The original Kevin 3 page was a sequel to my page Kevin 2, which primarily posted vapor art, cyberpunk and 80's era nostalgia.
3K: What do you think caused a lot of people to like your page?
KS: I think one of the main reasons my page has always been able to achieve a large amount of fans is due to the content we post, most of which includes nihilistic and self deprecating content, which is something my generation (1990-1998) really seems to enjoy and relate to.
3K: I do recall your page becoming the victim of the "Zucc" or "Zuckening". How does it feel continuously making new pages every time your current one gets taken down? Is it tedious, or have you gotten so used to it, it probably feels like nothing at this point?
KS: Yeah it's always a pain in the ass to rebuild after losing your page, but I have a great support network and great fans, so it never takes too long to build my numbers up. Case in point my current Kevin 3 page, we started the current incarnation in July and it only took 7 months to break 100,000 fans, that's close to 15,000 new fans a month, which is some pretty good numbers. I'm used to it at this point, and I'm hoping I'll never have to rebuild again.
3K: I also recall seeing your page participate in the #Zuxit movement along with #FreeTheMemes a few months back. Do you feel like you accomplished anything during that time?
KS: Hmm, we actually didn't have anything to do with that movement. Personally I thought it was a pointless gesture. Facebook is just too big and widespread for any page to just "migrate" elsewhere and expect their entire fanbase to follow them. I'll always be a supporter of free speech, but if you use Facebook you really need to abide by their rules, as inconsistent as they seem to be with enforcement.
In terms of the overall movement, nothing was accomplished. Yes, the discussion over censorship on Facebook was picked up by a few news sources, but nothing has changed in the long run. In August of 2016 we did support #FreeTheMemes, an earlier censorship protest which was also picked up by news sources. Much like the later #zuxit movement, this was largely a symbolic gesture, but 100s of pages participated in this protest, so in my mind I view it as being a successful thing.
3K: Do you feel like Facebook's page policy has improved or worsened, and why?
KS: Honestly I think their policy and enforcement has improved. In my early days of meming from 2012-14, they regularly removed the tamest content imaginable for simply no reason, leaving you with 30 day post blocks and often times deleting your personal profile. Their detection and enforcement policies were extremely arbitrary back in the day, and memers paid the price. Now, I've found, that you really need to try to get zucced, there's certain words that trigger an auto-report those words being the n-word (hard ER) and the f-word (not fuck), you post those and within the hour you'll be put in Facebook jail.
3K: What page do you think popularized this type of "ironic" meme page?
KS: The original Creme de la Meme, which started, I believe, in 2010. The page itself is no longer in existence, and its creator, according to rumor is dead, but his influence on the meme community is felt to this day. I guess another page would be フレッドYOLO/Freddy Yolo's page. While he doesn't have great interactions with his fans, he has always posted great content that falls under the banner of irony.
3K: What do you like and dislike about this community of Facebook pages you're a part of?
KS: The main thing I like about the community is the sense of belonging, we're all part of one big absurdist humor family. What I don't like, however, is the needless drama; some pages start fights, like criticizing their content or just talking shit about other pages for no reason at all, for the sake of starting a fight, pretty much as a cheap way to drum up publicity and stay relevant. It's honestly pretty pathetic.
3K: Do you think if Facebook would change their policies to something more lax compared to today, would Facebook be a more viable platform rather than switching to something like VK or Twitter?
KS: Oh definitely. If they had actual human people in charge of going through reports, I don't think anybody would be losing their hard work and pages would be safe from report abuse.
3K: Are there any final words you want to add and do you want to shout out any pages you like before we go?
KS: Like Kevin 3 on Facebook, and check out Professional Retard Memes, フレッドYOLO, Broken Pizza Hut, vague pictures, Hot Dogs In Unusual Places, and finally Youtube Snapshots. All pages with great content and worth liking!
Search Interest
External References
[1] The Daily Dot – Inside the inscrutable world of Weird Facebook
[2] New York Magazine – The Rise of Weird Facebook: How the World’s Biggest Social Network Became Cool Again
[3] Mashable – Facebook Pages vs. Facebook Groups
[4] Best Stories Online – Why 'Weird Facebook' is the Next Great Internet Subculture
[5] Tumblr – Special Meme Fresh
[6] Geekpreneur – The 7 Weirdest Facebook Groups
[7] Facebook – Freddy YOLO first post
[8] The Daily Dot – Facebook is deleting popular meme pages without warning
[9] The Daily Dot – Meme pages plan mass revolt against alleged Facebook bias
[10] Change.org – Facebook: Please address your seemingly indiscriminatory and harmful reporting system!
[11] Imgur – Screenshot Compilation of Removed Content
[12] Meme Alliance – This Week's Action, ZUXIT
[13] The Observer – Here’s Why 100 of Facebook’s Biggest Meme Pages Are Boycotting the Site
[14] Metro – #Zuxit: 100 Facebook meme pages are going dark tomorrow to protest censorship
[15] Fast Company – Meme makers threaten blackout in the Facebook equivalent of a carriage dispute
[16] The Daily Dot – Zuxit, the great Facebook meme strike, is finally upon us
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