Facebook page aimed at University of Edinburgh students goes viral.

Last Monday, the “Edinburgh Uni Memes” page was created on Facebook and attracted several thousand ‘likes’ in just a few hours.

Similar pages have sprung up in universities all over the UK, including Stirling, Glasgow, Dundee, and St. Andrews, all of which have several thousand ‘likes’. The page jokes about the quirks of Edinburgh student life, and now has over 7,800 'likes'.

Common memes such as “courage wolf” and “victory baby” have been transformed into Edinburgh-related in-jokes, poking fun at everything from not getting a seat in the library to the Pollock Halls experience.

Some of the memes make fun of other Edinburgh universities such as Heriot-Watt and Napier, prompting the administrators of the page to request, “Enough of the Napier hate please. Sure we’d get better banter back from Glasgow Uni since they’ve got a similar page.”

EUSA president Matt McPherson told The Student, “I think the memes thing tells us a lot about some things that aren’t a great culture at Edinburgh: the exclusivity of it and the digs at Napier, but I also think it tells us a lot of good things about students as well. It’s an amazing sign of strength.

“Students might say about themselves and each other that they’re apathetic to things and that they’re not part of a community and actually, within 24 hours, Edinburgh memes had 6000 likes on Facebook and they were all shared around collective identity, collective jokes, collective forms of understanding who they are, and that is a real sign that there’s a strong community at Edinburgh.”

Many students agree that the page is harmless fun, and one student commented, “I think they are really funny and show how much banter there is between Edinburgh and other universities.

"The fact that Heriot Watt and Napier are in on it too shows that we’re all up for a laugh.”

The line “one does not simply walk into Mordor,” originally delivered by Sean Bean in the 2001 film The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring had been made into many Edinburgh related memes - for example “One does not simply get a seat in the library,” and “one does not simply know when the KB bus leaves.”

Other film-themed memes have also made it on to the page, such as a scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka sarcastically leans in and asks “you wear a tie to the Big Cheese? You must be so sophisticated”; a row of Harry Potters has been dubbed a “Potterrow”.

Over the past week, many students have found that procrastination can reach new hights with Edinburgh Uni Memes, leading one meme to be created saying, “Likes Edinburgh Uni Memes on Facebook, fails degree.”

Y U no get memes? Sam Bradley explains the internet phenomenon.

As we all know by now, the internet can be a strange place. The ‘meme’ has become one of the most iconic comedic innovations the web has given birth to in recent years (apart from the many, many videos of cats) - but where the hell did it come from?

To start with, the word meme is thought to be derived vaguely from mimeme, ancient Greek for ‘that which is imitated.’ The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) tells us that the first recorded usage was by Richard Dawkins (the very same) in his 1975 book The Selfish Gene, long before 4chan and YouTube ran off with it into the distance.

Broadly, a meme is an image with a slogan or catchphrase that can be adapted for the author’s own purposes; usually they’re centred around either a ‘rage face’ (the Y U NO guy), a pop culture reference (Sean Bean in Lord of the Rings), a misspelling or just a screenshot – though the variation and combination of these factors is vast.

Memes can grow from the most obscure of origins – one of the most popular was based on a poor translation to English of sci-fi video game Zero Wing, resulting in the 'all your base are belong to us’ meme. I know, I don’t get it either.

The website KnowYourMeme.com, which attempts to track, explain and archive memes, lists 1,143 separate memes – though by the time you read this, that number will probably be out of date – they’re known for going viral in days.

So next time someone asks you, “Y U no get memes?”, you can cheerfully reply, “I don’t always get memes, but when I do, I own all your memes.”