Overheard with Karen Smart Karen, you are a well-known cartoon face, regularly popping up throughout the Flinders virtual community, but when and how did you first get started as the admin of the Overheard page? I had to look this up, since it feels like a million years have passed. The fancy FB admin data page tells me I’ve been a member of Overheard since March 11, 2015, but I don’t think I was made admin until a couple of years in, so I’m going to say Easter-ish 2017? 5 years - cripes. What is your favourite meme you have seen uploaded to Overheard of late? There’s so many! I have a weird sense of humour, so there’s a lot I keep off-page for fear of offending delicate sensibilities, but I’ve got a soft spot for Schitt’s Creek reaction GIFs between David and Moira Rose there’s literally a reaction meme for every situation. Can you count GIFs as memes? Probably not, but I stand by this. If you’re a traditionalist, you can’t go wrong with “Unmute-fart-mute”, “You have really average ears” or “We do NOT talk about the orangutan!” over the last month.
Over the time you have spent as an admin, have you noticed any big changes or cultural shifts in the online community of students? When I first came on as admin, we were a few months into the Trump presidency and the cultural and historical zeitgeist was already beginning to change in a very dramatic way. You could make the argument that US politics has very little to do with Australian cultural shifts but where the States goes Australia tends to follow, so all of the major movements - the 2017 Women’s March, the larger global Me Too movement, Black Lives Matter protests - as well as opinions on the increased focus on conservative politics in the wake of the 2016 election - these types of discussions and debates were all making their way onto campus as well. University life can feel a bit like the microcosm of the wider world in that respect. At the time, the oppressive weight of everything that was going on in the world was certainly a lot to deal with. And this was all before Covid-19 knocked us on our asses! The pandemic has dealt all of us a pretty deep mental health blow over the past couple of years. We’re all just kind of getting on with it, but for those students
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