The astronomical cost of rent; the spectacle of watching people drive in the snow; the question of whether or not to make hiking your entire personality; the agony of waiting six hours to board a ferry—life in Vancouver is full of absurdity, and sometimes the only way through it is to laugh. 

If you live here and have spent more than 15 seconds on Instagram over the last six years, you’ve probably come across @seabusmemes, whose purpose is to help us do just that. Launched in April 2018, the anonymous account (which we nodded to in our Best of Vancouver awards) has become synonymous with life in the city, using humour to lovingly point out our flaws.

The account’s creator wouldn’t reveal his full identity to us, but he did offer up a few clues: he’s 34, his first name starts with an M, he’s a freelance graphic designer, and he lives in Vancouver proper. Below, he discusses the value of memes, his hopes for the account, and whether or not he actually likes living here.

I should start by saying that I crowdsourced some of these questions from my team, because a lot of people have a lot of questions for you and about you. But let’s go back to the beginning. What made you start this account? 

I’ve always been someone who’s pursuing creative type-things. Around the time period when I started this, I was sort of in between things—I didn’t really have a creative outlet. And I’d always been a big fan and a big consumer of memes. What triggered it was there was an account called @bcferriesmemes. This was early 2018, and they were starting to get some news coverage and were getting really popular. At the time, I was living in North Van and I was taking the SeaBus to work every day. I was seeing their posts all the time and I thought to myself, “Well, the SeaBus is just like a little ferry. I could do something like this.” I did graphic design for my job, so I already had the skills and the tools to Photoshop things and create memes. So it all just kind of clicked for me.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CgDOWEoPtDG/?img_index=1

That was quite a long time ago. How do you keep coming up with new memes?

I’ve realized over the years that it’s kind of like a muscle. If I take a break for a week, even, I’ll come back the next week and I’ll have less ideas. It’ll be a slog. But when I’m doing it every week in a row—sometimes I’ll go six weeks in a row without taking a break—I find that ideas come much easier. When I first started, it was only about the SeaBus. I quickly ran out of ideas, within two months or a month—and then I broadened it to North Van local stuff. And then I just kept widening the scope to Vancouver, and then BC. There’s a lot to talk about in BC at this point, so it’s not often that I’m running out of ideas or having trouble coming up with stuff. But if you look at my stuff, I’m really only touching on a handful of topics over and over again.

What are the easiest things to make fun of about Vancouver?

That’s a good question for right now, actually, because some of the easiest memes to come up with are when it snows.

Oh yeah.

I usually do one post a week. But last winter when there was a really bad snowstorm, I think I did two posts within two days. That’s 20 memes. They are so easy to come up with, and people just eat them up. I think it’s because it’s something that’s relatable to everybody all at once.

What do you think people misunderstand about memes?

I think a lot of times, people look at things and just take them for face value without taking the time to think about the fact that memes are meant to be satirical most of the time. I feel like a lot of people don’t really get that. They’ll just see a meme about whatever topic you want to make it about, and rather than thinking more deeply about the satirical intention of it, people get offended so easily. I feel like a lot of people don’t get satire, I guess.

Why do you think people gravitate towards the things that poke fun at where we live?

I find there are two types of people that I’ll see in my comments and in my DMs. It’s people who get that I’m poking fun at Vancouver, but not in a mean way. Like, I’m not trying to say I hate Vancouver. I love Vancouver. I wouldn’t make my whole account focussed on a thing that I hated so much. So there are the people that get that, and then there are the people that don’t really get what I’m doing and they think I’m just hating on Vancouver because I hate it. Both of those people really engage with my stuff.

Early on in my journalism career I learned to never read the comments. But so much of social media is engaging with your followers. Do you have any self-preservation rules around that?

I typically only read the comments on Instagram. I think it’s because they’re mostly good comments; they’re mostly people who have been following me for a long time. I find it varies from platform to platform; when someone posts about me on Reddit, I’ll never read those comments. Reddit has the worst comments. And also TikTok. I feel like half of the comments on there are just bots. Something about TikTok seems fake to me.

You’ve been doing this for a long time now. What are your hopes for the page going forward?

I don’t really know. I’d like to be able to comfortably make a living doing it so that I could devote all my time to it. I don’t know what the best way is to go about that. I’ve tried really hard not to post ads on the page—I never post ads. I’ve never once posted an ad. A lot of people think that if I put local brands in the memes that those are paid sponsorships, but they’re not. I’ve made almost no money directly from this. I guess my goal at this point would be to just be able to comfortably live and do it full-time.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C0nEu4PPuuJ/?img_index=1

You must get a lot of collab requests. How did you decide that Seabus Soda was a good fit?

Julius [Makarewicz], one of the founders of Nude, and I have known each other pretty much since I started the account. Nude started within a year, maybe maybe even within six months, of when I started my page, and I was using them a lot in my memes. He reached out and gave me a bunch of product, and we met and became friends. So I’ve known him for years now, and this was always something we talked about doing.

Julius obviously knows who you are. Do all your friends know? Do you trust them to keep you anonymous?

Anyone who knows me personally knows that I do it. I’m sure most people who went to high school with me know that it’s me. 

I’m not precious about keeping myself anonymous on a one-to-one personal level, but I wouldn’t want to announce it on the page or anything like that. I feel like at this point, the mystery is kind of part of it. One time I was at a bar and somebody was there who knew one of my friends; my friend told them that I was @seabusmemes, and they were disappointed. They were like, “Oh, I wish I didn’t know.” I was like, “Cool. Never telling anyone.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CgnQJ69Pxtu/?img_index=1

Have you ever been sued?

I’ve never been sued. The closest that I came was when I received a cease and desist for a t-shirt. I did a short-lived merch run two-and-a-half years ago; it was a t-shirt with the London Drugs logo, but we changed it to say “Loving Drugs”. I got a cease and desist for that. I stopped selling that right away.

The other time—this is actually pretty funny. This scared the shit out of me. The page was still pretty small; this was probably within a year of starting the page, and I did this whole post of these stupid Canucks-themed sex toys. It was so dumb, but I posted it. Within 10 minutes it was reported and taken down, and then I got an email from someone in the legal department at the Canucks being like, “Hey, can we talk about this?” And I was like, “I took it down! It’s not up anymore! I’m sorry, I won't do it again!” But since then, I’ve had people from the Canucks reach out to me wanting to work with me, which is funny.

You're like, “Have I got a great idea for you!” 

[Laughs]

Do you constantly have people who know it’s you behind the account suggesting meme ideas for you?

No, it’s usually only people that don’t know me that do that. I’ll get random DMs, and it’s always something that’s so hyper-specific to them. Like, “You’ve gotta do a meme about this thing on my street, it’s crazy!”

You said you love Vancouver. What do you love about it? 

I mean, to be fair, it’s the only city I’ve ever lived in. It’s all I know. 

I like the location, I like the scenery. I like how there are so many things to do. People like to act like there’s not a lot to do, but there are tons of things to do.

Is there anything else you want to say to the people?

One thing I would say is: if somebody comes up to you in public and claims to be me, it’s not me. I would never do that. I know there are people out there who have done that before. I hear stories. There’s this one guy who I loosely know—he grew up in the same area as me, but I haven’t seen him in forever—he goes around and he pretends to be me and is super creepy with women. I hear these stories, and I just want people to know if somebody comes up to you and claims to be me, that’s not me.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.