Picture this: you’re scrolling through Instagram during your normal morning routine. You come across a picture making fun of Principal Brett Bower’s standing desk and his intense commitment towards it. You click on the account, browsing through the many posts displaying the inside jokes among students at Homestead High School. One talks about our unique use trimester schedule, one about the infamous Tome cart incident, and one meme about the questionable decision to play baby shark at prom. Each and every one of these pictures form the Homestead meme pages.

It all started during second trimester. Follow requests from a Homestead meme page began appearing in students’ profiles. No one ever knew who was the behind them, but they all seem to cover a component of every grade, staff member and activity at the school. “My first question was ‘who started the page?’ I was confused but as I started looking I found them funny. Now, my favorite one is the picture of Mr. Bower’s and Mr. Ebert’s faces on the hippos from Madagascar,” Ariana Aldape, junior, said.

As old accounts would disappear, new ones would pop up. Students from different grades send in requests for a new meme or tag their friends in anything relatable. Some students are directly targeted, while others are subtly hinted at through various descriptions. “I’ve been a part of theatre, and we have been targeted before. I think mostly because we’re some of the more interesting people at Homestead,” Bella Gabor, senior, said.

While at first the Homestead meme pages were thought to be a light joke, some started taking the memes too far and posted some possible offensive or triggering pictures.  “I feel like there’s a better use with your time and that we need to be aware of who we could be hurting and offending for unnecessary reasons,” Jennifer Zortman, math teacher, said. Others simply don’t find the pages entertaining at all.” Honestly, they’re just not funny at all. Probably 1% of Homestead’s population actually laughs at them,” Colin Satchie, junior, said.

The meme pages have become an important factor of Homestead High School. The class of 2019 now has a unique way of looking back onto their four years before college while the younger students can honor their school and document the changes in a non-traditional way. “I think they’re a really funny way of portraying the school,” Naythaniel Wilburn, sophomore, said.

Some call the pages inappropriate and immature, others see it as a light-hearted joke and a way to joke around a little. Memes are a way to pass around a personal joke in the form of imitation and can bring together a majority of people for a good laugh. However, in this process, the students need to be aware of when something crosses the line. While these pages have sparked some controversy, they’ve also allowed students to poke fun of their own school and accept that we are nowhere near perfect.

Gallery • 5 Photos

Sample meme from @hhs.meme.page