Meme news takes semi-retirement at 39
L'Actualité en memes
The meme page L'actualité en memes recently announced that it was partially or temporarily ending its activities, leaving in mourning its few 25,000 Facebook followers. Journal Métro spoke with its creator a few days before this very sad announcement.
You share memes every day, but know absolutely nothing about their creators. With the “Vu de meme” series, Métro lifts the veil on these unknown stars of social networks.
Maxime, 39, from Disraeli in the Chaudière-Appalaches region, who has been living in Montreal for 20 years, starts a new job as a computer science teacher at CEGEP and thus slows down his career as a meme creator.
Facebook's algorithms and “intense” moderation, which for some time has greatly reduced the scope of its creations, also push it to “pull the plug” on this platform. He continues to publish a little on Instagram where he has 14,000 subscribers.
An active and committed page
The Memes News page is known to have been extremely active in recent years, with several publications per day. His subjects are always glued to the news of the day and the tone quite caustic. He's not afraid to scratch. It is very often political, leftist, progressive.
Maxime started creating memes in 2012 during the student strike, in which he was very involved. He then published under his personal Facebook account. He opened the L'actualité en memes page in 2013 and continued until 2015, when he suffered a severe depression and ceased his activities and ended his presence on social networks.
A comeback
In 2020, with the pandemic, there was a burst of creativity (and availability).
< p>“I am someone who needs to be creative in life. I needed an outlet to get through the stress,” he says.
So he got into memes much more actively than before. He decided to be more cerebral, to do a lot to fully understand the mechanics. In this way, he was able to create his own style. He quickly went from 800 to 25,000 subscribers on Facebook and opened his Instagram page.
Until recently, every morning Maxime did his press review to find inspiration . He admits it, Éric Duhaime and populism in general inspire his humor a lot.
“I see if I find something to denounce or a position to take. I'll find the angle to talk about it and then the form.”
His online goodbye made netizens react in large numbers, testifying that they would greatly miss his cover memetic of current events. Hoping to find his work in one way or another on the web soon…
