My name is Sean Stouffer. But readers might recognize my Instagram handle more than my name. For the 12,000-ish people who know me as @SDSUAztecmemes, I thank you all. I wanted to say goodbye — and answer a few questions — before I end my four-year journey here with all of you. Each follower, from the day ones to the people who followed me as recently as last week, made my college experience significantly better.
My time at SDSU could have been painful, but serving you all gave me an overwhelming amount of joy and happiness.
A lot of people have asked me if @SDSUAztecmemes will live on. In short: no. But I also don’t have the heart to delete it. I mostly won’t post — unless something so spicy happens that I can’t ignore it.
Other college meme pages have passed it down to successors. I haven’t found anyone I believe could carry the mantle, nor do I think I could ever give over my baby to someone like that.
I hope in the future another meme page will rise from the ashes. But until now, this is it.
To be honest, it’s somewhat hard to write this. Thinking back on my experience brings a rush of emotions. Some fun, some wild — but all memorable. I’m here to give you a little summary of it all.
People also ask me why I even started this account. Some are surprised when they find out this isn’t my first. There was once a little high schooler named Sean who was interesting. He was the kid in the back of the class who would snort powdered Smarties candy that he recently crushed up with a golf ball, but also the one who would explain to you the intricacies of U.S. foreign policy right before the APUSH exam. He decided to channel his energy into something fun and enjoyable for his classmates halfway through his senior year.
Thus, @MMHSmeme was born (Mira Mesa High, for the San Diego natives).
It started out innocent enough. Garnering 300 likes on a good day, I was catering mainly to the few people that followed me from high school in addition to some new stragglers. Slowly I grew, made some friends, a few enemies funny enough and maybe even a handful of frenemies.
But by graduation, I aired out my share of school drama, may have been part of the reason a teacher got transferred, and received a compliment from my vice principal in one of the weirdest exchanges of my life.
Realistically, @SDSUAztecmemes was just the next step in my meme career. But it wasn’t without work — or competition.
I found my competition shortly after I stepped into the SDSU meme market. Ethan, aka @ragestate, was my edgier competition. He gave me a damn good run for my money too until he graduated. But he did motivate me to get the memes out fast and frequent. I respected him as a meme page, reviled him as a person.
With Ethan gone, I mostly had the market to myself. I can’t say there was one single post that brought in thousands of followers overnight, although my Adela slander was definitely a solid booster occasionally.
And of course, there’s always drama on the mesa.
One of the most common lines of questioning for someone talking to me is, how do you come up with these? Where do you get all this information? Do you have a life? While I won’t answer that last one, the first two are some of my favorites to answer.
What I can say with a bit of pride (and guilt) is that I’ve put an obscene amount of time and effort into this page. I’ve been collecting assets since I bought my first iPhone back in 2017, and definitely have some that would get me canceled. On a regular basis, I’m working with roughly 700 meme format templates, and roughly 3,000 reaction images. I save assets I like and wait for the right time to use them.
Some days are easy. For example: When we beat FAU during March Madness, all I had to do was search “hunting a bird” and boom, easy. It’s not always like that though. Some days there is no chisme, but other times I get a flood of DMs from fellow students. It’s hard to not find out that TikTok star Bryce Hall got roughed up at a Sigma Alpha Epsilon party in 2021 when you all message me about it.
In my down time, I would sometimes spend copious amounts of time scrounging through a students org’s Instagram or even googling “SDSU news” for a quick piece of info.
The downside is I now have a ridiculously large — and mostly useless — bank of knowledge about SDSU. A bank of knowledge that will now be tucked away deep in the recesses of my mind.
What I won’t forget is the friends I made along the way. I want to thank you all for everything you’ve done for me over the last four years. I especially want to thank my fellow college meme pages for the years of camaraderie, as well as my group of friends giving me advice and support. Also I would like to thank my mom for birthing me, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Last but not least, shoutout to my lovely partner, who I met through the page. They are hands down the best thing to come of this experience.
What seems like a good song for this moment for me right now is Bo Burnham’s “Goodbye” and more specifically the first stanza:
So long, goodbye
I’ll see you when I see you
You can pick the street
I’ll meet you on the other side
Sayonara, San Diego State.
P.S. I do still have to get a Masters Degree at some point lol
