Poke fun at UNC with the 'UNC Memes for National Champion Teens' Facebook page

Hye “Cat” Ryu and Jordan “JB” Sheely's Facebook page, "UNC Memes for National Champion Teens," aims to strengthen the UNC community by making fun of it.

Since starting in April 2017, the page has amassed over 2,200 members.

Ryu, a computer science major who is also on The Daily Tar Heel's editorial board, and Sheely, a physics major, started the page after seeing the success of meme pages made for Ivy League schools. 

“I saw the Ivy schools had one, and I was like, ‘If they can do it, so can we,’” said Ryu.

Sheely said the Ivy League's meme pages are huge. Columbia University’s meme page, “columbia buy sell memes,” has over 33,000 members.

Ryu and Sheely agree that the smaller student populations at Ivy League schools lead to a tighter-knit community. 

“Ivy culture is so much more concentrated, and it’s easier to make content that is relatable for everybody,” Ryu said.

Ryu and Sheely did not set high expectations when they started their page. 

“I expected nothing,” Sheely said. “I expected it to just flop and be the two of us.”

Ryu said the reason they made the page was because there was no other meme page for UNC. She said that 2,000 members is not that big, considering the student population here.

“There’s not much that students at Carolina can all relate to, which is why all the memes have been about Connect Carolina, basketball and Gary,” Ryu said. 

Ryu and Sheely has found it difficult to make content for the page since everyone must be able to get the joke.

“When we first started, it was just me and Sheely posting,” Ryu said. “But now people are posting their own things.” 

The page holds over 140 posts made by Ryu, Sheely and other members of the group.

However, not every post has remained on the page. 

“Back when '13 Reason Why' was a thing, people were posting some super insensitive stuff that I took down,” Sheely said.

The two creators want the page to be a place people can “share campus culture,” but also express themselves in a safe space.

“I think people use memes to communicate feelings that they are having about tough issues in a way that isn’t so serious, and (the page) kind of takes the edge off of all of that,” Sheely said. “All those Silent Sam memes are funny because we all get the underlying message.”

@david_saff

arts@dailytarheel.com