ABC Post 6: Making Memes of Me

I read an article recently that claimed that the only good thing left on Facebook is private meme groups.

I’ve found this to be semi-true. Tiktok has more interesting content, Twitter has more news and current events, Instagram is better for actually keeping up with people…but Facebook does have one thing going for it, and that’s the groups.

Particularly the private meme groups.

In the early 2010s I was part of Facebook groups with people I actually knew, like people I’d done theater with, people in my youth group, or people I went to Bible School with. But now all my active groups are either weird niche topics or meme groups.

I actually have a love-hate relationship with groups and I tend to delete them if they get too active and overwhelming–especially if they’re full of drama and inside jokes I don’t understand. But then sometimes I hop back in later if I’m bored. You know how it is.

Anyway.

This winter I joined an odd meme group called Mennonite Hood Memes (MHM). It is a mix of Mennonite, Ex-Mennonite, Menno-adjacent, and Kingdom Christian types.

In my opinion, the most interesting thing about the group is that they are big on original content. So unlike other meme groups where people are mostly re-posting memes they found other places, most of the memes in MHM were created by members of the group.

In fact, MHM has some meme templates that I’ve only ever seen in MHM, like this one, which I think is from the Mennonite Church USA archives.

Recently I met one of the MHM members, Jolynn, in real life.

As far as I know I’d never met Jolynn before, just knew her from various meme groups. But you know how it is in the Menno-world…Jolynn’s mom was from Oregon so I know a lot of her family, we have mutual friends, my mom knows her sister, etc.

Anyway, Jolynn moved within a couple hours of where I now live in Virginia, so we decided to hang out. Jolynn’s friend Becky, who’s also in MHM, later joined us.

Since I still dress Mennonite and Jolynn doesn’t, I thought it would be funny for us to re-create the Mennonite lady meme template. “It’s too bad I don’t have a white net covering,” I mused.

With this, Becky sprung into action. She no longer dresses Mennonite either, but she kept a lot of her clothing, and soon she’d outfitted us with:

• A cape dress
• A white net covering
• Black stockings
• Black shoes
• Some conservative Mennonite book I’d never heard of
• A prop cigarette (made with rolled-up paper)

Once Becky had pinned the covering to my head, we were all set to re-create the photo. Here’s what we came up with:

People then started making memes with the new template.

Then, since a photo of me had already been made into a meme, I decided to meme one of my old pictures.

Backstory:

10.5 years ago I was in a play at my community college. This was my first time doing “real” theater and I was very excited. But then one day the director said, “okay for tomorrow’s rehearsal I want you to wear your makeup.”

And I was like, “um…I don’t know how to do makeup.”

Like literally, I’d never worn makeup before. Maybe a few dabs of cheap concealer on a pimple that just made it look worse. That’s it.

I knew that I’d be required to wear makeup, because otherwise I’d look too washed out under the harsh lights. But I had this idea that someone else would do our makeup for us.

But no, we weren’t fancy enough for makeup artists. Every actor had to do their own makeup.

Once I told my fellow actresses that I didn’t know how to do makeup, they tried to help me out. I don’t even know where this makeup came from, but someone found me some foundation, this pink stuff that went on both my lips and my cheeks, and an eyeliner pencil.

The makeup was awful. Very thick and gross. The eyeliner pencil didn’t work very well, so I switched to this other type that came in a solid cake and was applied with a wet brush. That was much easier to apply, but then the liquid would spread through the lines in my eyelids instead of staying in a nice straight line, sort of like when you write on your hand with a very liquidy pen.

But the lip stuff was the worst. I don’t know how anyone can stand the feeling of wearing lipstick. It was nasty, drying my lips out, and it got on my teeth.

Anyway: My main point is that I didn’t like the makeup and I was pretty bad at applying it. Of course, with the harsh lighting and distance it looked fine to the audience while I was on stage, but I wasn’t exactly snapping selfies.

As the show was wrapping up, our director gave us each a pickle-shaped Christmas tree ornament as a gift. Once, in the dressing room during intermission, I jokingly put the ornaments on my ears and struck a “supermodel” pose. My castmate Kim took a pic and put it on Facebook, and I was a little embarrassed but that’s life.

But anyway, I knew it would make a great meme, so I unearthed it and created this:

People thought it was especially funny to see this after just seeing me in a cape dress and white net covering. I don’t think people realized this picture was over ten years old. I really haven’t changed an enormous amount in 10 years, except for about 6 gray hairs and a wrinkle between my eyebrows from constant skepticism.

Speaking of skepticism…

Next thing I knew, my “skeptically buying shoes while a skeptical man looks at me skeptically” picture, from my last blog post, was memed by an MHM member named Avery Amstutz.

Then today, this gem showed up on the page.

Like several other memes I’ve featured on this post, this one was made by Packy Sporre, who is a very prolific meme-maker.

Anyway, I’ve found great joy in these memes of me, so I thought I’d share them with you as well.

(I don’t know if I want to recommend the group or not. You might love it or it may not be your cup of tea. So if you join because of this post and then get into a terrible argument with a troll, please don’t blame me, lol)

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Want to get caught up on April Blogging Challenge posts? Yesterday Mom posted a book review, and Wednesday Phoebe posted ten things about herself to help you get to know her better. Mom will post again on Monday.

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