Bored Panda got in touch with Sam Grannis, the creator and admin of the page and he was kind enough to share some more. Firstly, we were curious to learn more about how the page was created in the first place. 

“I always loved memes, I was constantly posting on Facebook and was always told “I post the best memes” and that I should make an Instagram account dedicated to just memes. On top of that, I had followed a few meme accounts on Instagram at the time and noticed that some accounts were making money. I thought “The memes I post are better, I could do this”. And so I created my account in 2017,” he shared. 

Naturally, given the literal hundreds of thousands of followers, we also wanted to hear Sam’s opinion on what made the page so popular. “I have a knack for identifying what people will find funny/relate to, on top of that I also go out and do my way to post content that hasn’t been shared by 100 other accounts before I post it. So my followers know they’re gonna get hot new content on my page.”

We wanted to explore this idea of what makes one meme better than another, as they have been around for quite a bit. So we asked Sam to give his best shot at breaking it down. “A good meme contains a funny image/video with a super relatable/funny caption,” he shared with Bored Panda. 

“The image/video is the most important component of a meme, you can have an average caption but if the content you’re using is really good, it will carry the meme and still be really funny. If you’re able to write a caption that hasn’t been overused and is still relatable/funny and the image/video you’re using is great in itself, that’s the recipe for a viral meme.” Interestingly, the caption might be one of the oldest indicators of a meme, that separates it from a generic “funny image.”

At the same time, managing a page that posts memes might be harder than it seems. The internet is changing with content rules morphing year to year, often without warning. “Running a meme account has become harder and harder as time goes on, unfortunately. The TOS (terms of service) gets stricter every day.”

“Every piece of content I post is heavily vetted by me, I have gained a very strong understanding of what’s allowed and what’s not throughout the years. Stuff that you wouldn’t even think would be removed gets removed. Any big account that’s been doing this for a long time and is active works really hard to keep its page afloat.”

“I’ll just put it this way,” Sam shared, “If I were to hand my account to a random person, I don’t think the account would remain longer than a week. It takes a very strong understanding of the TOS to carry on. What sucks about that is the quality of content suffers but it’s what must be done to maintain your account.”