Memes
Grace loves to post memes on her Instagram. This daily way to make herself laugh actually led to her falling in love.
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If you have anxiety, depression or any sense of the world around you, you know that not *everything* is going to be okay. In fact, many things aren’t okay and never will be! But instead of falling into the pit of despair, we’re bringing you a little OK for your day. Every weekday, we’ll bring you one okay thing to help you start, end or endure your day with the opposite of a doom scroll.
Created and hosted by Nora McInerny.
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Share your OK thing at 612.568.4441 or by emailing IGTBO@feelingsand.co.
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The IGTBO team is Nora McInerny, Claire McInerny, Marcel Malekebu, Amanda Romani and Grace Barry.
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The transcript for this episode can be found here.
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Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.
Grace Barry: I'm Grace Barry, and it's going to be okay.
On most days, memes are my okay thing. I just love opening my Instagram, going to the explore page, and just finding a ton of unhinged, weird, chaotic stuff on there. I think it's amazing, and I love when people are weird on Mark Zuckerberg's internet. I think it's fantastic, I think it's so important, and I think all of those people that make memes and curate them deserve some sort of plaque, or medal, um, Or like, a gift card, maybe some Kohl's cash, I don't know, but they definitely deserve something.
I think that I've perfected and gamed a little bit the Instagram algorithm, because my explore page is perfection. And I think I've done that, because about two years ago, I started posting five Instagram story every single day. Exactly five, every day. It's probably the only thing I've been consistent with for more than a month besides like I have a folder that's full of probably thousands of memes that I've accumulated over the years And I've put that to good use because it's become my job if you follow our sister shows Podcast Instagram at TTF a podcast shameless plug you will see that there's some like dark humor Style memes on there.
I curate those for you guys because I just think it's really important to To be able to cope with the weird, dark, twisty, not so fun, really sad stuff with humor, I think it's really important to be able to laugh. Um, cause a lot of times memes have helped me cope growing up. Um, and they've done More than just that, you know, I've, I've made friends weirdly enough because of memes and That is a special shout out to my loyal story likers.
You know who you are, and I love you And weirdly enough. They've also brought me a relationship So over a year ago I had the opportunity to finally interact with my campus crush of, like, two years. We had a Zoom class together sophomore year, and I was just instantly, like, I want her. Like, that's the one.
Um, I didn't know it at the time, but I do know now that that's what that feeling was. I wasn't out at the time, but that is 100 percent what that was. Um, I'd seen her on all those Zoom calls and other people's pictures and occasionally on campus and those encounters were very exciting, as you can imagine, just the like quick look over my shoulder and I was like, oh my god, what if she saw me?
She never did, by the way, but it was just the thought of it, you know? Um, and then during our senior year, I saw her walking towards me on the street that we both lived on off campus and I just knew this was my big moment. And I had to take my shot. It had it was now or never, you know? I had 15 seconds on the clock and the coach just put me in to try to sink a three.
Sorry about that. At the last minute, right before we got within a reasonable enough distance for me to look up and be like, Oh, hey, I looked down at my phone. I opened my Bluetooth part of the settings and I just toggled that thing on and off. until we were completely past each other and my opportunity was gone.
I was just terrified. I was so scared because she was tall and like so, so beautiful and so intimidating and I'd never made the first move on a girl before so I didn't know what to do. Um, so what I did, was I went home, I stalked her on Instagram, which is what normal people do, by the way, and I found out that she had recently posted a Kamala Harris meme.
And if you haven't seen the Kamala Harris memes, I don't care what political party you are, I don't care what your beliefs are, I don't care where you're from. The Kamala Harris memes of her just cracking up are the funniest things I've ever seen, and they still make me laugh to this day. And so I saw that she'd posted this, and I bet you can imagine what I did next.
And if you thought that I stopped her the next time I saw her walking and said something like, Oh my god, I saw this meme that was so funny, and talked to her Like a normal person. I'm so sorry to say that you are so completely and terribly wrong. What I did instead was I waited a few days and then I sent her another Kamala Harris meme with a really poorly constructed line that was just something like Saw this and thought you would think it was funny lol and this went on for an excruciating three months.
That's right. We would walk by each other three days a week, same time every morning, and each time I would be just engrossed in the weather app, or turning my bluetooth on and off, or typing random letters into my notes app, just trying so desperately to look busy, because I would work myself up about saying hi, and then I would psych myself out at the last minute.
Even though I spent the entire afternoon and night before, ransacking my closet, sometimes my roommate's closet, Sometimes the dumpster, just looking for something to wear to make her notice me. I'd wake up early and put on makeup, I'd do my hair, I'd spray extra perfume, I would slow down when I walked to see if we could pass each other at just the right time.
And I never said a word to her. And then in December, after months of curating memes to make her laugh, and Sometimes getting them back, which prompted me to text everyone I knew and say she wants me so bad, lol. I finally did it, and I sent her a message asking her to get coffee with me, and she left me on read for 17 hours before responding and saying that she'd love to and that she'd hit me up at the beginning of the semester.
But at this point it'd been three months. And I was not ready to wait for the beginning of the semester. So she posted the next day about a famous YouTube couple that I had followed very closely when I was younger getting married and I proceeded to tell her a very unhinged story about the time that my best friend and I had meticulously Drawn out the timeline of this couple's relationship because we were trying to figure out when they started dating because we were 11 and in Catholic school and didn't have anything better to do and we just started chatting more and more frequently through memes and also through words like normal people and About two weeks later.
We were talking on the phone You almost every night. And a little over a month after that DM was sent, she actually asked me to be her girlfriend. It's been over a year now, and I literally can't picture life without her. We've sent so many memes back and forth that I think the two of us alone could probably single handedly carry the meme economy of Instagram on our back.
I'm very confident in that. And I still post five memes every day. And I live for the text from her that just says, Hey babe, great memes today. But what's even better than that is getting to sit next to her when she scrolls through them, and hearing her actually laugh at them, because her laugh is medicine, I think.
I think it's the best sound in the whole entire world. I know that the internet is a weird, dark, scary place, and that there are a lot of bad things on here, but I think when you can find a pocket of good, like I did, I just think that's the most magical thing ever. And if I can find the girl of my dreams, despite all of the yucky weird stuff, through memes, nonetheless, then I think, you know, we have no other choice than to believe that it's going to be okay.