An Interview with the Creator of the UMN Meme Page

Ben Philbin has created a meme masterpiece—and isn’t stopping soon

By Hannah Dove

On Wednesday, October 16, The Wake sat down with UMN Facebook Meme Page creator and graphic designer Ben Philbin to discuss how this important university meme source came to fruition, as well as its curation and its future. At the time of this interview, 6,206 Facebook users follow the page and it has 6 moderators and 3 admins. 

Hannah Dove: Thanks for agreeing to sit down with me.

Ben Philbin: Oh, of course—always willing to talk about the meme page.

H: So how exactly did this meme page come about?

B: Well, it started in 2016—it was in Middlebrook Hall—it was with my friend Jack Brandes, and we were on the Berkeley page, and we just thought, “you know this could be really fun, we could do this for the U and maybe it will blow up, maybe it will have a hundred members.”

H: And how many members do have now?

B: I think we are just about to hit 6K. That’s way more than a hundred! Everyone has been so nice, at least the people I have gotten to meet, and I think that’s great.

H: How do you act as admin for the page? Have you ever had to evict anyone from the page?

B: Early on, adminning just involved making rules, clearing up ambiguity about posting because not many people understood that, “oh, we should only be posting memes related to the college.” And as it went on, it became more like “oh ok, I need to figure out what kind of content is ok, what do we want to talk about—we’ve had a couple incidents with different demographics, specifically incels, that we had to stop, but I have a really dedicated group of moderators who do great work for the page. 

H: Do you feel any source of competition with the UMN Reddit page?

B: Reddit and Facebook are very different—Facebook is more involved personally, with your name, everything is out there with your profile—whereas with Reddit you are more anonymous, and you don’t necessarily need to be known to be part of this group. I think one of the better things with doing it on Facebook is just because people feel more involved with each other. You see people’s faces for the most part, they aren’t hidden behind an anime profile picture.

H: Have you been pointed out or talked to in real life due to your associations with the page?

B: Oh yeah. It’s weird every time. Early on, around when we had 400-500 members, I was just walking to the Union one day and some people were like, “Oh my God, is that Ben Philbin?” and I was like, “Who the heck is talking to me right now?” because I’m not exactly a socialite. But ever since then, I’ve gotten quite used to it.  There’s been some weird stuff and some not weird stuff, very wholesome stuff. For instance, I was marching in the Homecoming parade for Radio K, I met up with some people from the Daily and they recognized me right away. 

H: So, how do you feel about people using the UMN Meme Page as their main source of news, or at least a huge part of how they learn about things around campus? I know you’re a Journalism major, it must feel kind of strange.

B: It’s been a more serious thing lately. MSA even wanted me to do their social media, because so many people come to the meme page for news, which is wild to me. It’s really nice for that, I feel a bit more fulfilled, but also - what? I really wish it didn’t have to work like that but I think it’s nice that it doesn’t because it’s very convenient for people to see it and get the funnies that they crave. A lot of people on the page in fact go to Wisconsin, or other places around the Midwest, but as long as all the content is about the UMN and is not like, racist, sexist, etc. I don’t really care.

H: Alright, final question: what constitutes a good meme?

B: I think relevance is really importance—maybe because I’m in news writing classes right now—a meme is just retelling of news but in a really funny way, proximity, prominence of names, humor value/quality—putting time into memes. It feels like you did an earnest effort into making the content. And at the end of the day content is content, and if you’re driven to make content I have a lot of respect for that.

It’s a bit odd to consider that what was originally supposed to be a silly meme page for UMN students has turned not only into as a news source, but also as a way for people to connect with one another. Like Ben said, Facebook is not the most anonymous website, and behind each icon is a real life student. Sometimes, the memers get to the latest news faster than the actually journalists. But one thing is certain: The U would be a little less funny without it.we can be certain that the U would be a little less funny without it.