Readers’ pick: Hard to swallow pills
In the 24-hour meme cycle, it can be hard for jokes on the “GW memes for the 10th most politically active teens” Facebook page to stick. But “GWU srat life as Vines” is a video that begs repeat viewings.
The compilation assigns a popular six-second video from the now-defunct Vine app to each of the 10 Panhellenic sororities on campus. As of Sunday, the post from earlier this month had 853 reactions and 248 comments.
After it was posted, the video was flooded with feedback about how they thought the content was accurate to what they’ve seen on campus, with students writing comments like “wait that’s actually footage of us” and “SPOT ON.”
In the video, the vine featuring Kappa Delta shows two white girls poorly attempting a mashup of R.Kelly’s “Ignition (Remix)” and Lauryn Hill’s “(Doo Wop) That Thing.” Another representing Kappa Alpha Theta shows three people repeating phrases like, “I love Starbucks” until it devolves into gibberish.
Sophomore Allison Herrity, one of the creators who posted the meme, said she and sophomore Marina Meyers were inspired by other popular videos that had previously been posted in the memes page, such as “GW as vines” and “GW frats as vines.”
“My best friend and I saw those videos and were talking about how funny one about sororities would be,” Herrity said. “It worked well because she knows how to make videos and I spend entirely too much time watching Vines.”
They began the process by sending Vines back and forth to each other and joking about which chapter it applied to most, but they got so invested that they decided to put the video together and post it. Herrity said their choices were based on each sorority’s general reputation around campus.
“I think we both thought it was really funny and thought it would be cool if it got a lot of likes but didn’t really expect it to,” Herrity said.
Since the video was posted, students have been seen passing around their phones to show the post to one another –if they haven’t already tagged them in the comments section. Herrity said she is glad to see the video speak to the student body.
“We honestly had a lot of fun making it,” she said. “I’m glad the reactions were pretty positive overall.”