WIP… kind of

Alright, so this isn’t exactly a work in progress. But I look at it as me progressing my skills in analyzing the rhetoric of various things.

Given the weather circumstances in the past week there has been a definite increase in the number of Hurricane Sandy memes pop up around the internet. Most of the ones that were brought to my attention were on the Penn State Memes page. One of my favorites was of Bad Luck Brian, saying that UPark had cancelled classes after 1:10 and then Brian only had classes from 8 to 1:10. This fits my life perfectly. I had just gotten back to my dorm room after my last class that ended at noon. I checked my phone and I got the text confirming classes for the day had been cancelled. Needless to say I was not pleased. I feel like this was the case for many kids on campus on Monday. And because of this it is a relatable post and succeeds in rhetoric in that it appeals to those who are going to be seeing it.

Another one that I enjoyed was one that compared the administrators to stumped monkeys. In the upper half of the meme there is a weatherman showing the impacts that Sandy is going to have, with the quote “This may be the biggest storm of the century.” And beneath that is a picture of some monkeys dressed to the nines with the quote “Meanwhile at Old Main”. Again, this comic definitely succeeds in rhetoric. Clearly, the population of University Park was upset with the administrators when they had not cancelled classes for Tuesday. Although it is somewhat offensive, I find this meme hilarious. It’s certainly a case of “Everyone’s thinking it, I’m just saying it” because no one really wants to poke fun of the admins, but I’m pretty sure no one enjoyed walking to class on Monday in strong winds, with cold rain, and a broken umbrella as a result of the winds. Anyways, I think Hurricane Sandy ended up producing some good memes for the Penn State community, but that is as its actual physical impacts were not so great.