Etahad Dharhin, 25, currently resides in the Bay Area of California. Her foray into social media began when One Direction was formed. At 12 years old, Dharhin “fell in love with them,” and created a fan page to digitally express her love for the band.

However, Dharhin eventually deleted that page and started an official meme page, which she says was “one of the first meme pages on Instagram.” Its account name was @__________sex__________, and it grew to half a million followers “in no time,” though the account no longer exists.

Monetization came quickly as well. As soon as Dharhin saw other meme pages advertising, she reached out to those pages and learned how to both approach brands and to have brands approach her. In the beginning, she was charging $40 for an ad.

However since that time - a lot's changed.

“Back then, a lot of advertiser companies did not take me seriously,” Dharhin said. “You can find ads for McDonalds, Dunkin Donuts, dating apps on main pages right now. But previously, it was really, really rare to see those ads.”

Flash forward to the modern day, and advertisers have grown to recognize the demographics that meme pages appeal to. Primarily, the coveted 18-24 cohort.

However, it’s not just advertisers who have begun to take meme accounts more seriously, it’s also Instagram itself. Instagram pays and offers bonuses to certain high-performing meme accounts, with some meme pages not even needing to rely on advertiser income for their admins to run.

Eventually though, Dharhin wanted to move into the “real world,” but that doesn't mean that she left her meme page expertise in the past.

In college, Dharhin secured an internship for a tech company that developed a myriad of smartphone-based applications. There, she made meme content for those various apps in order to establish their brand and promote the company.

“I work with brands to create content for their social media, or run CPI (cost per install) campaigns or CPM (cost per million) campaigns and kind of consult them on their social media strategy. And create UGC (user generated content) for a few brands.”

However, Dharhin still keeps one foot planted firmly in her meme-page social media presence.

“I think if you continue to work with brands, I think it's really important to actually be part of the space. Because if you are a part of the space, it's much, much easier to understand how to help brands. Like, you have to be inside, not looking from the outside.”

joseph.hyslop

University of Southern California

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joseph.hyslop Jamie Cohen is a professor at CUNY Queens and holds his PhD in Cultural and Media Studies, with a bulk of his focus being in digital culture, and specifically, memes.

Hassan Malik, 24, resides in Ontario, Canada. He’s garnered billions of impressions across social media during his decade plus meme-making career. And he’s seen the industry turn on its head multiple times.

“It all goes back to Tumblr,” says Malik. “Tumblr became my life, like most of my friends were online. So I think that's when I started my social media career.”

Originally, Malik’s page was created as a fan page, where he created posts to support and promote his favorite artists. These posts started to gain traction, and Malik began experiencing the first vestiges of online success.

However, when talking to other content creators on Instagram, Malik realized that Instagram promised far bigger economic opportunities than Tumblr afforded.

“I saw how much money the big creators on Tumblr were making. And it was nowhere near [how much Instagram creators were making]. So I knew that I had to jump ship. And I kind of saw that Tumblr was dying in a way because there were negative connotations about it, especially on other platforms. It was like, labeled the social justice warrior platform. And I think that I saw that, you know, it didn't have the potential to be as big as something like Instagram.”

Opening his first Instagram account, Malik was able to grow it to over 200,000 followers.

“At that time, I was working at Wendy's…And I knew that if I can make money from Instagram, I didn't have to stay there.”

And while his social media initially focused on his personal interests, Malik began to shape the account around what would perform well.

“I consider meme accounts, or like faceless accounts assets in the same way you can consider networks or billboards assets,” Malik told me after revealing that a marketing company primarily focused on music promotion bought one of his first Instagram meme pages.

I had asked him if there had been any announcement on the account (one that posted primarily music and pop culture-focused memes) once it had been sold that there had been a change in owner, to which Malik said there hadn’t.

Meaning that that page, which had garnered a loyal following who believed that they were following an individual poster, had become unknowingly targeted by a corporate marketing entity.

But the general social media sphere has changed in numerous ways since Malik started his journey. Both in the way that advertisers approach social media and also in the way that Malik approaches his accounts.

“I think I've definitely gotten better at separating my personal interests, and just viewing an account as an asset that needs a certain amount of followers, which then is used to plug something or sell. In the past, it was a lot of, you know, posting things that I personally found, entertaining or funny. Now, I don't really look at it that way, I think of the demographic I'm targeting, and try to get in their mind before I post something.”

In terms of his future endeavors though, Malik finds there to be value in keeping his accounts active - even when moving onto different ventures.

“I've had to have posted more than 10,000 times on Instagram in my life. I think that I've learned very well how to get attention from people,” says Malik.

Currently, Malik is in the process of starting his own social media platform - the impetus of course coming from his experience as a meme-making maven online.

joseph.hyslop

University of Southern California

❮ ❯

joseph.hyslop Jimmy Ryan, 22, currently lives in Philadelphia, and is a student at Temple University. However, he’s also behind the popular twitter account @jimmyoutsold, a new type of meme-making page, one that’s front-facing, currently flourishing on Twitter.

Memes as they function in Ryan’s world are usually referred to as “reaction” images/videos/gifs. A video of a woman yelling in joy when her favorite football team scores a touchdown accompanies a prosaic post about ordering a chicken wrap. A video of Sydney Sweeney’s character “Cassie” from Euphoria screaming may accompany a tweet about Ryan’s drafts getting deleted from his app. This type of meme format, where a “dramatic” video will accompany an otherwise quotidian post is common.

Audio

Listen to Jimmy Ryan explain his process on how he creates the perfect meme

Ryan also notes that he believes that Twitter allows parasocial relationships to be more easily built between an account and its followers, since big twitter accounts generally produce a higher number of tweets per day than Instagram accounts produce memes per day.

And just like meme pages on Instagram, advertisers are beginning to see the value in these front-facing meme accounts - though many still fundamentally lack an understanding of how to word their advertisements.

“I've turned down promos because I don't really think my audience will interact with this," he said. "I'll feel embarrassed or feel bad for the people if they pay me and I tweet [it] and it gets no interaction.”

However, some advertisers are catching on, and even giving accounts like Ryan’s the creative freedom to word the advertisements as they see fit.

“People feel more connected to me because I have a certain tone to all of my tweets,” says Ryan. “[The marketing team’s] goal is for it to be more in our style, not to come off as like a manufactured ad for them.”

Additionally, in a somewhat similar fashion to Instagram, certain Twitter users (those who subscribe to Twitter Blue) can monetize their tweets - getting paid per impression. This allows accounts to garner an income without having to rely on advertisers, though criticism has been levied against the platform for this practice encouraging spam and “rage baiting.” (Rage baiting refers to making purposely inflammatory posts that'll encourage engagement, think "all press is good press"). And the current rate is $1 per million impressions, which doesn’t necessarily allow the most lucrative career for most accounts.

Ryan currently studies marketing at Temple, and is looking to incorporate his success with social media into a more corporate setting.

“I'm so chronically online I always know what's trending, what the topics are, and what would get an audience to respond versus what wouldn't,” says Ryan.