Bachelor of Meme Studies
Conferred by University of the Internet
A rigorous four-year exploration of viral image macros, their sociocultural impact, and optimal posting windows. Thesis requirement: produce a meme that makes your parents say 'I don't get it' for at least 72 consecutive hours.
"Dankus Maximus Et Semper Viral"
Program Overview
The Bachelor of Meme Studies is a four-year, fully unaccredited program designed for the rare scholar who can identify the exact moment a meme stops being funny and becomes a corporate advertising campaign. Coursework spans the rise of the rage comic, the rococo era of advice animals, the brief but intense reign of the deep-fried JPEG, and the contemporary tendency to caption everything in chunky white impact font even when nothing else about the situation calls for it. Students develop a working vocabulary of more than three hundred image macros and learn to deploy them with the studied carelessness of someone who has not seen daylight since the second semester.
First-year students complete a foundational sequence in image grammar, covering the rule of thirds for crop placement, the typographic dignity of Arial Black, and the difference between layered ironic distance and simply being mean. By the end of the first term, every student is expected to maintain a single-image post that achieves between twelve and seventeen shares without resorting to recycled material from the library's archive. Plagiarism is permitted but must be credited with a watermark so small it cannot be read on any mobile device manufactured after 2019.
The second year focuses on platform-specific dialects. Students rotate through workshops covering long-form caption culture, the unspoken rules of stitched video commentary, and the distinct visual vocabulary of screenshot-of-a-screenshot reposting. Special seminars examine the phenomenon of the unexplained image-of-something-mundane that accumulates hundreds of thousands of approving reactions despite containing no joke, no caption, and no apparent purpose. A required minor in subtweeting can be added at no extra cost.
Third-year coursework introduces the academic study of meme decay. Students learn to recognize the precise moment at which a format moves from organic community use into a marketing slide deck, and the slightly longer moment after which it is appropriated by a city's department of transportation. Field trips include visiting the comment sections of expired posts to observe the strange archaeology of strangers arguing about something that stopped being relevant three years ago. A capstone requirement asks each student to produce one meme that is genuinely funny and one meme that is intentionally not funny, then defend both in front of a committee that has been instructed to make no facial expressions during the presentation.
Graduates of the Meme Studies program have gone on to careers in social media management at brands that absolutely should not be making memes, freelance caption writing, and being the only person at a family dinner who has heard of any of the things being discussed. Alumni are encouraged to maintain a posting cadence of at least one ironic image per fortnight throughout their professional lives.
A Note From the Dean
There is an unspoken truth in meme scholarship: the people who most want a degree in this field are precisely the people who would be ruined by having one. A formal credential changes the relationship between you and the joke. Suddenly the work becomes a body of work. The post becomes a deliverable. The throwaway image you spent forty seconds making in a drawing app on the bus becomes part of your portfolio, to be cited in panel discussions and lightly mocked by a professor with a thinning ponytail.
Our program addresses this paradox the only way an institution honestly can: by refusing to take itself seriously while charging the same tuition as if it did. Students leave with the same vague competencies they came in with, an additional four years of debt, and a credential that impresses no one except other meme scholars, who immediately become competitive about their thesis topics.
What we offer, in the end, is permission. Permission to spend a ridiculous amount of time on a thing the world has agreed is unserious. Permission to call that thing your field. Permission to look across a room at someone laughing at a phone and to think, calmly, that you have studied this. That is worth something. Probably.
Common Questions About This Program
Is the Bachelor of Meme Studies an accredited credential?
No. The Bachelor of Meme Studies conferred by University of the Internet is a novelty parody. It is not recognized by any actual accrediting body, it does not satisfy any real academic or professional requirement, and it may not be used as evidence of qualification in any setting where a genuine credential is required. Every diploma printed by this site carries a permanent watermark identifying it as a novelty.
Who is this program intended for?
The Bachelor of Meme Studies is intended for adults who enjoy a particular kind of deadpan satirical premise and would like a printable artifact that extends the joke. Common uses include framed gag gifts, office desk decoration, social media screenshots in private group chats, and the occasional small ceremonial moment when a friend has done something the world refuses to recognize as worth a credential.
How does University of the Internet relate to the rest of the catalog?
University of the Internet is a fictional institution whose only public output is the Bachelor of Meme Studies. It joins a roster of similarly fictional institutions across the catalog. Each institution exists as a small piece of the larger gag, and the names are chosen to evoke a generic flavor of real-world institution that the program is gently teasing. No institution mentioned anywhere on this site refers to a real organization, current or former. Any resemblance to a real school, agency, or business name is unintentional and will be corrected on request.
What does the printed diploma actually look like?
After typing your name and submitting the form below, the site renders a single-page diploma image that includes the program title, your name styled in a traditional diploma script, the fictional institution name, the Latin-style motto, and a small notice identifying the document as a novelty. The artwork is sized to print cleanly at standard letter size on cardstock. There is no digital signature, no embossed seal, and no real watermark beyond the one printed visibly on the artwork itself.
About the Catalog
Every program in the fake.degree catalog is an original satirical creation. The writing team studies an area of contemporary life that has become, in some quiet way, deserving of a degree, and then writes the kind of program bulletin a real university might publish if it were willing to recognize the area honestly. The bulletin you have just read is one of sixteen such programs. New programs are added only when an honest case can be made that the field exists.
If this page made you laugh, the editorial team will consider its work successful. If it made you slightly more skeptical of the next real credential you see described in serious tones, the team will consider its work doubly successful. The diploma is a small piece of printed paper. The work it claims to certify is, in every real case, the work itself. We try, in our small satirical way, never to confuse the two.
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