Can a meme die before it ever goes truly viral? Popdust’s Chief Meme Officer does a deep dive on ‘Why did jessica leave me’
Why did jessica leave me [sic] is a Facebook meme page that has amassed roughly seventy thousand followers in the past five days. In spite of the page’s seemingly skyrocketing popularity, meme-ers are mourning an early death for Why did jessica leave me memes.
What is ‘Why did jessica leave me’ and where did it come from?
The Facebook ‘community’ WDJLM popped up sometime during the morning of Saturday 21 April 2018. Lampooning your recently-dumped, oversharing Social Media Acquaintance, WDJLM burst out of the gate with a fact-disclosure jab/cross combo.
I’m pretty sure this is an actual quote from my actual Myspace circa 2007.
With its silly stock image of a crying man, Why did jessica leave me became an instant classic on Mark Zuckerberg’s personal data mining system. The page admin himself is a character named Jimmy (@comebackjess), who used to date the Jessica in question.
But who is Jessica?
Apart from the insight that she is Jimmy’s ex-love, Jessica herself is nowhere to be found. Jimmy has kindly asked people to stop making ‘fake jessica pages’ as it hurts his feelings.
In addition to the fake Jessica pages, other spin-off meme pages have started popping up on Facebook; irreverent pages with grammatically incorrect titles like ‘Im Jessicas dad‘ and grammatically correct ones like ‘Jessica’s Dog‘ have amassed thousands of followers on their own just by joining in on the joke (whatever it is). Even ‘Jimmy’s Mom‘ seems to be in on the fun.
Are the Jessica jokes the work of one twisted mind, or a handful? After Why did jessica leave me started the meme, it’s hard to tell which page came next. Is Jimmy the admin’s real name, or is this the work of another Facebook comedian? The page has been quick to gain traction – 14k Facebook followers a day is no small feat.
So why are meme-ers questioning the longevity of ‘Why did jessica leave me’?
The page has gotten some serious exposure from some of Facebook’s heaviest hitting meme pages, but some commenters are questioning the shelf life of the meme. Searches of KnowYourMeme.com and Reddit returned zero information on the meme, which is generally indicative of a meme still in its infancy stage.
The easiest way to tell if a meme will be viral is to compare it to a recent popular meme. Using Google Trends revealed that WDJLM is still trending up, with interest rising steadily over the weekend and peaking late Tuesday night. At the rate the page is gaining subscribers, Why did jessica leave me and its spin-offs are set to see a rise in interest over the weekend to come and into the next week.
Holding the meme up to the microscope
Using one of April’s biggest meme trends (‘Tired Spongebob‘) as a barometer for comparison, it’s clear that Jessica memes are still on the rise. At the height of its popularity (so far), WDJLM was actually the more-searched term on Google – and with the meme only trending up every day, there’s no drop in the appeal of Jessica memes in sight.
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