What’s in a meme?
If you aren’t already acquainted with them, memes are a wildly popular and fun way to express a struggle, experience, relatable moment and pretty much anything else you can think of. Memes are online inside jokes that are shared between friends, and sometimes even shared between thousands and thousands of people.
OCMDMemes, short for Ocean City, Maryland Memes, is an account on Instagram that creates and shares memes. It’s become quite popular, amassing over 830 followers in just over a year. The account even had one of its meme reposted by the official Old Bay Instagram account.
The owner of the OCMDMemes account remains anonymous, but I was lucky enough to get an interview with them and ask them some questions about their memes.
Q: What inspired you to start the meme account?
A: This is kind of ironic, but I think I was upset about somebody getting hurt because they crossed in the middle of the road. It was an idea I had for a while so I started it with the goals of, one, making memes, obviously, and two, getting people to use the crosswalk.
Q: Do you make all the memes? Or do people also send them to you for you to share?
A: Yeah, I make most of the memes. I tag people in any posts that contain memes they’ve sent to me.
Q: What inspires you to make your memes? Do they come from personal experiences?
A: A lot of it comes from what I’m doing or what’s going on. I burn my feet at the beach, and I make a meme about it. H2Oi comes into town, I make a meme about it. Etc., etc.
Q: How do you stay up to date with all the new meme trends? Do you ever get overwhelmed with trying to keep up?
A: I think staying up to date with the trends just involves being active on the internet. Honestly, I don’t use social media that much. Memes are everywhere, so it’s not too hard to find ideas.
Q: I see that people have started to submit memes to you. Do you think your page is bringing people together?
A: I hope so. The main goal was always to get people to use crosswalks, but I’m not sure if that’s going well. Seeing people comment or send me stuff related to Ocean City makes me happy.
Q: Where do you see the account heading to in the future? Do you plan to keep posting memes?
A: I don’t know where the account is headed. I truly never thought I’d be doing the stuff I am now because of a meme account. I’ve made a lot of new connections and it’s really interesting to see the kinds of people that reach out to me. Although I plan to keep posting memes, I’m worried that I’ll run out of ideas or that the content will all start to seem the same.
Q: You just hit the one-year anniversary on your account and had a giveaway, will there be more giveaways when you hit milestones in the future?
A: Yes, there will be. I don’t plan to start selling stickers anytime soon unless people express a lot of interest in it, but I want to keep giving them out in whatever ways possible.
Q: You’re anonymous. Do you get a lot of people asking about your identity or who you are?
A: All the time. I get people that [direct message] me random things they think I’ll find funny, and then as soon as I respond, they go, “Tell me who you are please, I won’t tell anybody.” Maybe sometime in the future I’ll tell people who I am, but until I decide to, nobody is getting any information. Staying anonymous has definitely been an experience.
Q: Do you see your account as a way of educating tourists? For example, the memes about not littering and using the crosswalk.
A: Yes. I want tourists to see the posts about those things and stop doing them. There’s nothing more annoying than the fact that some tourists will trash our town and then leave because they will never have to deal with the consequences of it.
Q: Do you have a message you want to spread or something you want to say?
A: #usethecrosswalkocmd! But seriously, if I see you crossing the street in the middle of nowhere, I WILL yell at you. I have done it before.
Thank you, OCMDMemes!
It’s great to see someone trying to spread an important message in a funny way. You can find their account on Instagram by searching OCMDMemes, and a link will also be on this page so it’s easier to find. Please give them a follow, you’ll have tons of laughs and you can send their memes to a tourist you know!
