Image Description: A bee with a cowboy hat. Beehaw.
By Cate Tweedie
You know what sparks my passion? Niche Facebook meme pages. Far from the realms of boomer and clickbait pages, I’m talking about pages and groups curated by people who have a really strong interest in what they’re memeing and have found a group of people with the same interest to work together with to create a full ‘humour ecosystem’. In some cases, this has been created so well, that some of the groups have organised meetups across the globe and have fostered real friendships beyond just shitposting.
What follows is a collection of my favourite niche Facebook meme groups or pages that might be of interest to others with the same niche tastes, or just an amusing exposé on what really specific groups actually exist to make you just question your entire existence.
I started off my degree studying both Science and Music, but for sustainability purposes, had to cut it down just to Music. Therefore, I now get my science fix through highly specific meme pages, the best are as follows:
Wild Green Memes for Ecological Fiends:
Image Description: A meme about Ireland’s changing climate in history, the the “Am I a joke to you?” face imposed on an iceburg. Text: “Saint Patrick: *gets credit for Ireland’s lack of snakes* Pleistocene glaciers: Am I a joke to you?”
In my opinion, the best Ecology and Nature-based meme pages out there. It is composed of people who are professional scientists, enthusiastic amateurs and people who just are interested to learn more. They have both a meme theme of the year and of the month: currently it is the month of the fungus and the year of the opossum. The memes range from current trending ones and the group’s own creations. Frog and Cranberries, it must be autumn.
Palaeontology Coproliteposting:
Image Description: The text “Foo Fighters” and “A Foo” imposed on a predator dinosaur and a prey dinosaur, respectively.
Similar to Wild Green Memes, but more dinosaur and other prehistoric creature based. It’s a good time if you grew up watching Walking With Dinosaurs and enjoy highly specific memes about ancient organisms you’ve probably never heard of.
Science diagrams that look like shitposts
Image Description: A spinal diagram of a man with his neck shooting forward at a ridiculous angle. Text marks “flexion” on the neck and “extension” on the chin on the first head, and on the second head, “extension” is marked on the neck and “flexion on the face.
Created by a member of Wild Green Memes, this page is full of diagrams and excerpts from textbooks which honestly are hilarious and/or wacky and fully adaptable into other memes.
Entomemeology
Image Description: A meme about a man and spider staring each other down using ‘baby yoda’ images. Pure comedy. Text: “me, stepping into the shower trying not to do anything to anger the spider. Spider on the ceiling watching me.”
Memes about bugs and insects combined with genuinely cool and interesting facts. A few members have actually joined to work through the arachnophobia or other insect related fears, to great success.
Ichthceptional Memes for Piscine Themes
Image Description: Theresa May entering the mouth of a carp. Text: “Carpenters when they see a carp.”
Genuinely a science-related meme page just about fish. Trying to say the name out loud makes it sound like you have a lisp.
In the same vein as these science pages/groups are broader academic subject related pages such as:
What if memes, but ancient/Classical Studies Memes for Hellenistic Teens
Image Description: Ottoman furniture changing to a roasted turkey as a comment on the region of Turkey’s varied past. Text: “When you lose WW1 and your 600 year old empire collapses.”
Ancient history has a whole load of meme potential, and this group and page make full use of it. Think Bill Wurtz’ history of the entire world, i guess but in highly specific meme form. Plus, you learn fun facts to show off to the people in your online tutorial.
Steve the vagabond and silly linguist
Image Description: Adding latin endings to Bear Grylls’ phrase “Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.” to create “Improvisia. Adaptus. Overcomum. Top text: “When you haven’t studied for the latin exam so you just add latin endings to english words”.
Being a polyglot or multilingual has never been so fun – this Facebook page is full of jokes about linguistics, other languages, grammar and spelling, and is run by a person who genuinely loves languages (whose name isn’t actually Steve?) and is highly entertaining if you’re learning another language. The Duolingo Owl is featured heavily, but not as much as you might expect.
Brutalist Concreteposting
Image Description: A meme about Le Corbusier’s work to introduce Brutalism to outer society. Text: “Brutalism: Papa, why don’t they love me? Corb: I do not know little one. But it is of no concern. I will make them love you.”
For people who like the Modernist design concept of Brutalism in architecture – people from all over the world post interesting Brutalist buildings they’ve seen, and it’s super interesting to see a lot of forgotten, unusual or unpopular designs.
Besides these, and a few TV-show specific groups (Horrible Histories ShoutyManPosting is lit), the other group of specific pages I feel inclined to highlight is those with ‘threatening auras.’ If you want to see some slightly terrifying and intimidating signs, look no further than Signs with threatening auras. If you’re really desperate to look at something pretty wack, and often disgusting with an element of schadenfreude, Toilets with threatening auras is the place to go.
The biggest value of groups like these is actually the community the admins and contributors have built around common interests. Especially in the current global climate, it is amazing to see people looking out for each other and forming genuine relationships, potentially catalysed by the personal level Facebook and access to a personal profile provides, as opposed to in forums such as Reddit, where usernames or pseudonyms are common.
Bonus meme groups you should check out: Crap Bird Photography, THIS CAT IS C H O N K Y, Famtastic Lomgbois amd Where to Fimd Them, Wird Secondhand Finds That Just Need To Be Shared, IT Crowd Ruddy posting and Art Music Memes For Wagner Hating Teens.