{"id":91,"date":"2017-02-23T03:27:13","date_gmt":"2017-02-23T03:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drurymirror.org\/?p=91"},"modified":"2017-02-23T03:27:13","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T03:27:13","slug":"drury-student-creates-popular-meme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drurymirror.org\/2017\/02\/23\/drury-student-creates-popular-meme\/","title":{"rendered":"Drury student creates popular meme"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Alec Presley<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Drury University had already had one student go viral this year when Lexie Vaught lost her shoe during a game. Considering how rare something going viral is, one would be forgiven for thinking it would be a while before another student made or did something that took off online. Fortunately, freshmen Alex Jones \u2013 quite accidentally \u2013 made sure that wasn\u2019t the case.<\/p>\n

The Beginning<\/h2>\n

Jones, a member of the theater and communication departments, was in Dr. Richard Maxson\u2019s Communication Theory class. \u201cIt was a Monday, and I\u2019m having trouble focusing. You know how Mondays are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before class, Jones had seen a picture of the new chameleon his friend from high school had just bought. As Jones said, \u201cit was a cute chameleon,\u201d and it stuck in his head. As he\u2019s in class and not necessarily being as studios as he could, he decides to doodle. \u201cI was like. \u2018what should I doodle?\u2019\u201d And of course, the lizard was what most prominent in his mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cI start with the eyes, because I knew the eyes. And then I tried to do the nose, and you can see that I tried to do the nose a bunch of different times.\u201d The more Jones drew, the worse it looked. When it was done Jones had managed to crack himself up. \u201cI can\u2019t stop laughing. Dr. Maxson is up there teaching class, and I\u2019m in the center of class, and I\u2019m crying. And the two people in front of me turn around, the people to my side turn and look at me, but I just can\u2019t stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Jones got himself together, he texted a friend of his in the class \u201cDo you want to know what I was laughing so hard about?\u201d The friend replied yes, so Jones passed the drawing to her, with the caption \u201cI tried to draw a chameleon from memory\u201d written on the paper. When she saw Jones\u2019 handiwork she also broke down laughing.<\/p>\n

Going Viral<\/h2>\n

After showing the paper off to a few friends, Jones tweeted out his drawing side by side with the real chameleon that inspired it. Over the course of the next 28 hours the tweet got approximately 30 retweets and 100 likes. Jones was starting to find the notifications annoying. \u201cSo I turn off notifications at four in the afternoon. And I go to the mall for four hours. After that I\u2019m hanging out, and I open twitter, and it had like 8000 likes and 4000 retweets.\u201d The initial reaction of Jones and his friends was a mix of shock, awe, and humor.<\/p>\n

Jones thought for sure that after 10,000 retweets the picture would die down. As of Wednesday February 8, the picture has 91,000 retweets and 227,000 likes. It didn\u2019t really occur to Jones how big he was getting until he stared receiving notifications from trend watchers. \u201cIt was like, you\u2019re now trending in Miami. That was the first one. Then there was Houston, San Francisco, Dallas, Canada, that was the biggest one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several articles have been written about Jones\u2019 drawing, the two that stick out the most to him being Comedy Central\u2019s UK equivalent and Buzzfeed. Jones now has more than 1000 followers. \u201cIt\u2019s weird, because I\u2019ll post a poll and get a couple hundred responses.\u201d However, the part that Jones loves most about going viral is the \u201coriginal content that people are making with my drawing. I love that.\u201d People have been photoshopping the picture over people\u2019s faces, like Donald Trump\u2019s.<\/p>\n

While Jones does like the attention he\u2019s gotten over this, the important thing for him is that \u201csomething that made me laugh, also made lots of other people laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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