Over the past decade, memes have dominated the online world. Their prevalence has become so vast that they are now considered their own medium of entertainment and communication. Since memes can cover any topic, many meme pages are tailored for a specific audience. A common form of these personalized meme pages is school meme pages, which, as the name implies, create memes regarding certain topics, people, and events at a high school; Lakota West is no exception.  We now have two meme pages enjoying frequent traffic by our community, with others trying to gain footing.

The Lakota West meme page, lwhs_meme, was founded on March 3rd, 2020 by class of 2020 seniors Supreeth Koppula and Tommy Tuttle. Since then, the meme page has posted approximately 300 times and has over 1700 followers. Topics range from Ohio weather, faculty members, Coach Bolden, homecoming, and exams. 

One of the biggest questions surrounding the meme page was who would take over after the graduation of its founders. Earlier in the spring of 2021, it was announced that ownership would be given to two students. Those two students ended up being senior Aiden Shatto and junior Patrick Lakeberg. 

Lakeberg talked about the process of becoming an administrator on the page. “There was an application posted on the meme account” that’s where the process really began. The application consisted of “Sending in a few memes to the account” in order to gauge the candidate’s creativity and humor, along with making sure that posts would be school appropriate“[Applicants] would then have to do a brief interview, a get to know you sort of thing, in order to figure out what kind of people we were and if we showed enough maturity to run a public account.” 

Now that he is actually running the account Lakeberg notes that  “[a}t first it was stressful, I didn’t want to post something that could possibly be offensive, and I definitely didn’t want to post memes that people found unfunny or lame or stupid. But over time I  feel as though I’ve gained a good idea of what people like and what’s too much when making the memes.”

“I love running this account, and I love making the memes, especially when I see one of our memes get posted on a lot of people’s Instagram stories, making people laugh, and having something students can show off is a great feeling. I love what I do>’

Students were also quick to comment on the page.

“I love the page, especially when we call out our rivals. My favorite is definitely the East collection.”

“If you want smoke, you better get ready to get clowned on by our meme page.”

“I’m not really one for social media, but I do believe the students running the account do a terrific job!”

“I mean, I know a lot of other schools that have meme accounts but they have nowhere near the same consistency and quality as ours does.”

“They funny.”

Additionally, we have the LWHS Bad Parking meme page.  Everyone has seen the atrocious parking jobs in the Lakota West parking lot. As high schoolers learning how to drive, it seems like they skipped the lesson on parking and maneuverability. An anonymous student at Lakota West has created an LWHS Bad Parking Instagram account to showcase the horrendous parking.

The LWHS Bad Parking account was created on November 11th, 2021 and has close to 1000 followers. Since then, there have been fourteen posts, each worse than the previous. In the account’s description, they make it clear that they aren’t affiliated with Lakota West and will remove a post if the owner wants it taken down. All of the license plates are redacted as well. Go follow @lwhsbadparking on Instagram!

The Lakota West meme pages have thus positively impacted the student body, with good laughs and memorable posts. Students can only hope that in the years to come the account will only grow in quality and popularity.