One of the most harrowing shared experiences for American teens is the PSAT, a national exam that can make or break a student’s future by determining whether they’ll get valuable college scholarship opportunities. When thousands of kids take the same test during the same week, and they’re told not to share the test contents, the inevitable happens: they share the test contents.
PSAT memes are inscrutable to adults, who didn’t see the exam and don’t get the references. But to teens, they’re a winking acknowledgment that they all had to go through the same thing and were required by the College Board not to talk about it.
The exam memes have been around since 2014, but this year presented an additional challenge: would the College Board’s attempts to crack down on memes have any effect on what students shared? Do teens care enough about memes to post them even when their scores could potentially be canceled? Hell yes, they do.
#psat http://pic.twitter.com/quxunkC82p
— natasha (@GlitterPotatos) October 26, 2017
The #PSAT hashtag on Twitter is crammed with exam memes, and the biggest one is about Frances and her dad. From the memes, we can discern the following: Frances tells other kids her dad didn’t fight in the war because he’s a pacifist, but he actually has a heart murmur. Which doesn’t stop him from working as a bus driver.
The passage in question seems to be from Kirstin Valez Quade’s Night at the Fiesta: Stories, but if you didn’t know that and hadn’t seen the test, the literally hundreds of Frances tweets out there would make no sense.
When your dad can't fight in the war because he has a heart murmur and has to drive a bus#psat2017 http://pic.twitter.com/N0x9UHUvVy
— Mason Cool (@spookly1) October 25, 2017
When your dad’s heart murmur starts acting up #psat http://pic.twitter.com/6woApelpcH
— nolan (@nolkelley) October 25, 2017
Frances’ friend: “My dad travels the world and has all these amazing souvenirs!”
Frances: “My dad has a heart murmur” #psat2017 #psat http://pic.twitter.com/aG1t7jwrEU— Holly Fazio (@_hollyfazio) October 25, 2017
When the kids whose dads fought in the war find out that your dad isn’t really a pacifist & has a heart murmur #PSAT http://pic.twitter.com/mQg000PDsP
— Chloe Carter (@chloecaarter) October 25, 2017
When ur daughter lies about you being a pacifist but really you just have a heart condition #PSAT #psatmemes http://pic.twitter.com/eoxvjqDSiS
— Porzingis MVP (@Thatguy1459) October 25, 2017
when your dad can't go to war because of a heart murmur but can still drive a bus full of people at 50 mph #PSAT http://pic.twitter.com/yMUsB1zxXh
— panda (@arnavpande) October 25, 2017
when your dad has a heart murmur but still drives the bus #PSAT2017 #PSAT http://pic.twitter.com/vkvaYJpsEY
— meghan (@meglamaster) October 25, 2017
When Frances's dad drives the bus #PSAT http://pic.twitter.com/Bj3vsEhLzd
— panda (@arnavpande) October 25, 2017
“Frances’ dad” was the most prolific PSAT meme, but hardly the only one. The context for this one isn’t clear without seeing the exam, but seems there was a question about wetting sand before building pyramids.
when everyone’s talking about some pyramid and how the sand wasn’t wet but ur lost bc you guessed on it all #psat
— Jake⚰️ (@jaqqub) October 26, 2017
when youre on your way to build a pyramid but forget to water the sand #psat http://pic.twitter.com/1gB0h1O5tj
— Alex Williams (@alexwliams) October 26, 2017
And even more incomprehensible are these tweets about superplumes, and naysayers who don’t believe in superplumes. No idea what this question asked, but it sounds difficult!
When the naysayers say that there's not even a superplume, but that there's two #psat #psat2017 #psatmemes http://pic.twitter.com/iISJIkfJAf
— Bradley Mickelson (@mickmastermike_) October 27, 2017
When those naysayers say there's not even one superplume #psat2017 #psat http://pic.twitter.com/M8eqNst4O7
— dev (@_xdevvx_) October 26, 2017
When the neon-22 values indicate the existence of not 2, but 1 giant superplume #psat http://pic.twitter.com/LShOFHKvQM
— Pranav Gunturu (@pranav_gunturu) October 25, 2017
When there’s more than one superplume. #PSAT #psatmemes http://pic.twitter.com/pJqQVr91c6
— Baby Buck. 🦌 (@taylorbuckner_) October 25, 2017
"Naysayers" when they hear the superplume theory. #PSAT #psat2017 http://pic.twitter.com/lxkgWROHQ7
— A_babot (@KrazyCuban0) October 25, 2017
trying to figure out if it’s a superplume or two plumes #psat http://pic.twitter.com/SM23dfCrmu
— Averie
(@averiekaske) October 25, 2017
This is more or less a harmless act of defiance against the company that produces the PSAT, the College Board. Students don’t like being told what they can and can’t tweet, but the stakes here are fairly low: no one is actually using the memes to reveal questions or answers that would offer an advantage on the test. Although the College Board has asked some students to take their memes down, there are so many memes that it would be impractical for them to start canceling scores en masse.
CollegeBoard: Do not post about the #PSAT on the internet
Twitter: Do NoT pOsT aBoUt ThE PsAt On ThE iNtErNet http://pic.twitter.com/0m9Ta8SUQC— Max Vinagre (@NikeFreakShow) October 11, 2017
PSAT memes are just part of teen culture now and the college admissions business will have to adjust.
The post It’s exam season, and PSAT memes are back appeared first on The Daily Dot.
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