Another Meme, More THON

I know that I’ve done a meme before but I can’t help but be in the THON spirit still (both blogs this week have to do with THON – I can’t get enough).

This one I found particularly relatable because even after one of the most amazing weekends of my life, and after the most historical and impressive THON to date, people were still trying to bring Penn Staters down. I, like perhaps some of you, saw it first hand on my Facebook newsfeed and on my Twitter timeline. It fired me up.

Still does.

Our community was blinded and cast away by the entire country just a few months ago.  It was ridiculous, fueled by ignorant people who for some reason loved to watch us burn.  The insult to this injury came weeks later when Joe Paterno passed away. State College was left to grieve and mourn, while the same “haters” made only rude and obscene remarks.

created by Bob Briglia

Then, on the weekend of February 17-19, we did something that surely no one could trivialize. We THONed. And raised over 10.6 million dollars doing it. 

Something to be proud of. But, when we showed that pride, the haters still didn’t want anything to do with it. Why were we bragging? Trying to throw it in the face of everyone else?

That’s why I like this meme so much and find it so rhetorical. In quite a powerful picture, it says all that needs to be said. People are going to hate on our school, on our fortunes and misfortunes. But they’re not important.

If you look at the picture, you see the Lion on stage, throwing up the diamond in front of fifteen thousand screaming people. We’re proud. And excited. And rightfully so.  I can look at this meme and think, “Ha! This shows them,” even if it doesn’t. Because, those people probably don’t care. But it is rhetorical to me. Because it says what I can’t to all of those people. It shows the unity and power of this place, in a language that only we can speak.

THON. On. Let’s go state!

The power of the Penn State meme

A lot of hype has been going around on Facebook about “memes,” particularly in State College, the Penn State Memes.  They’re hilarious. Some of them make fun of freshman, some make fun of Temple, some complain, others merely make statements that the majority of us take for granted.

The idea in general is pretty interesting. Take an interesting action picture, usually of some sort of pop culture character, and apply a caption that many people can relate to.

Schools all across the country are picking up on the trend. In fact, there are even memes – to make fun of other people’s memes. This makes for quite an entertaining newsfeed.

Several of the Penn State Memes are dedicated to the “issues” that took place on campus this year. There are memes about Sandusky, memes Paterno, and memes about how we all don’t like outsiders who bring up Sandusky and Paterno in the same sentence.

One of the memes though that relates to this subject, I find particularly funny – and particularly rhetorical.

meme created by Joe Drelick

It is a picture of Phil Knight, chairman of Nike, speaking at the Joe Paterno Memorial that took place just a few weeks ago at the Bryce Jordan Center. The caption, “The truth… #sorryimnotsorry” is hilarious in my opinion. Not only is it found in the new fad of these “memes,” but it also alludes to a popular Twitter trend of “sorrynotsorry” – applying to instances where a person feels strongly about what they believe in and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks (obviously).

This image does an especially good job of this because, as anyone who heard the speech knows, Phil Knight pretty much stuck it to the national media and public opinion. He flatly stated what he, and the entire Penn State community, believe.

And, surely, none of us are “sorry” for believing it. 

Intrinsically Superior

Social networks are all the hype. Surely, that could go without saying – but to what extent? It never ceases to amaze me what we learn from sites like Facebook and Twitter. I mean, there are loads of problems with them, and many people end up deleting their pages. But, for many, social networks not only act as a place for interaction, but as a place for news as well.

This “news” could be new pictures, personal videos, musical discoveries, YouTube releases, or (even though this may seem crazy), it could even be actual news worthy of reporting.

In this week’s blog, I chose to look at the rhetoric displayed in a YouTube video that I was lucky enough to stumble upon on Facebook.  And I mean really lucky. The kind of lucky that gets you excited about something on a much deeper level than simply getting an easy topic for a school assignment.

This Def Poetry video, called “What Teachers Make” (by Taylor Mali), is something that hits pretty close to home for me. My mom is a single parent who works as a teacher – in a not exactly nice area.  It is the same school that my sister and I attended, and the same place where I fell in love with the profession.

In many ways, it makes sense for me to be a teacher. I love people, don’t care about money, and think that learning for the sake of learning and not grades is one of the most amazing things that someone can do.

To me, Mali does an incredible job with this poem because he expresses the intangibles of satisfaction that being a teacher comes with. The satisfaction of helping someone finally get it, and the drive the push the kids who already do. He throws in the face of others the disappointment in his eyes in those who only work for money, or a higher place in the societal hierarchy.

One of my favorite finds online ever, this video makes me so incredibly proud. I realize that I have a long way to go to be able to boast the same statements as Mali, but I hope that someday I’ll be able to.

Hail to the Lion

To stick with the Penn State them for one more week, this last image I find to be very rhetorical, but also very representative of all the happenings so far at school this year. The Penn State lion head, one of the most iconic college logos in the United States, took on a new look just a few months ago.

courtesy of USA Today

Where it first began, I cannot say, but it is easy to see why the lion head with the tear added spread so quickly. Like the cover of The Penn Stater, which I wrote about in an earlier post, this image quickly became something that seemed to express what words were unable to.

The Nittany Lion, which for years could do no wrong, which was idolized by many, suddenly became anthropomorphized to fit in with everyone else. An image that was as heartbreaking as it was comforting.

Particularly in the image above, it is shown in a downtown storefront (The Family Clothesline) window. I think that this one is especially powerful, because, not only is it in a heavily trafficked area, but there is nothing impersonal about this version.  It is not merely some graphically designed image on a computer screen, but it is hand-drawn, crafted out of sympathy and sorrow.

The image has appeared more than once of course, for there have been several times to shed tears this year. First showing up after the scandal in November, it could be seen in Facebook profile pictures, on shirts at People’s Nation, in magazines, and (of course) all over the web. The next time it would appear was just weeks after we had gotten back to school. For some, syllabus week served as a time to celebrate being back in Happy Valley, to forget about all the questions they faced at home. This sentiment disappeared quickly a few weeks later with the passing of Joe Paterno.

Again, the campus mourned. And, again, the lion cried.

Incredibly rhetorical, the image of the tearful lion mirrors the emotional state of a University in both a literal and symbolic way.

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