Flashback: Michaelmas Column 6

Full issue can be found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/assets/downloads/TCS_Volume14_Michaelmas_Issue6.pdf

It’s finally happened. I thought it would occur later on in my life – yet no matter. I cannot be distracted from my ray of happiness. I have become an internet meme.

Having uploaded a photo which I found charming for its insouciance, as well as being a perfect example of my hat = slimmer theory (see previous columns) I wandered away from my computer for a few hours to actually do some work, take some notes and think about theorising my autobiography. I returned to find that amusing pictures and phrases had been uploaded by two of my friends, both of them, presumably extremely bored, had memed me. Is that even a verb? ‘Strutting Sophie’, apparently.

Well it made me chuckle. I’m not exactly sure why I feel so chu ffed about this but it’s kept me buoyed up the wholeweekend, past my friend sending inappropriate texts to my Cindies conquest from my phone a fter MCR dinner on Saturday, past seeing said conquest in a boat on Sunday and choking on my water, past my sister going home from her visit here and leaving me richer in cupcakes yet poorer in company.

The simple act of someone attaching some vaguely amusing words to a not-even-particularly-inspiring picture of me has turned everything around! If you have any ideas as to why this permanent mood change has occurred, dear reader, please email them in, or something, to the editor – lord knows I love a good postbag of columnist-hating vitriol mixed with a charming splash of innocent and lovely suggestions.

My sister thinks I’m just agog over someone paying attention to a photo of mine; my best friend put forward via skype that I just enjoy people making fun of my pictures as much as I make fun of them; and my mother googled the word ‘meme’ and threw a fit that my picture on the internet might be ruining all my job chances. As if, as an English graduate sitting a second Master’s degree in Children’s Literature I even have any job chances.

When I try to pinpoint why some words on a picture of me have brightened my life quite so much I am forced to admit that it’s because it makes me feel like I am Down with the Kids. In conjunction with the Taylor Swift song ‘22’, I feel like I am signi ficantly contributing to the idea that 22 is, really, the new 18. In fact, it’s so much better than eighteen. I can handle an internet meme about me without questioning my self-worth, and my long term memory for song lyrics is much improved. Oh yeah, so what if it took the internet to prove that 22 is alright. You just watch. A fter you’ve read this, I bet you want to be 22 with an internet meme as well. Maybe I should put it on my CV.