This Teacher's Meme Game Is So Strong It Is Actually Helping Students Learn

David Red is a professor at St. John’s River State College in Florida, so he works with students who are technically adults. But they're still more into memes than studying, which he has used to his advantage. Red told Bored Panda that he tries to connect with his students based on their interests.

“Students generally seem to really like the memes or really anything I do that makes it feel to them like I'm actually trying to talk to them and not just reading from a script or text,” said Red. “For example, in one of my classes this year I wore pink every Wednesday and the first test was entirely themed on Mean Girls. Some of them started wearing pink on Wednesdays too and they really enjoyed it. It became almost like a 'team color.'”

But Red's true strength is his meme game:

He has gone viral for his incredible recreations of popular memes—making them all about teaching, of course:

He's good at tapping into what is happening in pop culture, too:

Though some references are a bit dated:

But he speaks for teachers everywhere:

Especially at the end of the school year:

Guess he gets a lot of complaints about grades?

Since achieving viral fame, Red has been getting non-stop notifications on his Facebook page, which is just his personal profile. There has also been some backlash, because some people don't approve of his sense of humor. He posted a very measured response to the outcry:

He wrote:

Friends (and others, as I will make this post public),

Many of you have gone out of your way to support or defend me in comments sections all over the internet recently and I am very appreciative of you doing so. While most of the people commenting and sharing my memes have been positive, there is no way to be seen by that many people that don't know you at all, and get zero negative reaction, so it is expected that there will be nasty or just critical things said. 

The sheer number of responses forced me very quickly to disable notifications on anything I've made public so I have hardly seen those negative comments, but of course I know they exist. While I appreciate your defense, I also don't want you to feel obligated to do so - I am not bothered. I realized very quickly that it was out of control in a way that made it pointless to try and argue - in the time required to even consider a response, there would be three more pop up. 

It is an unwinnable game of whack-a-troll, and I am, even to my own surprise, really not affected by the negative commentary of strangers. Far more disturbing is how many people actually think it's Pitbull doing this.

What does bother me however, is my inability to respond to the vastly larger number of positive comments and occasional questions. It just feels extremely rude of me to not reply to people that say nice things to me. As I said, I had to disable notifications so I am generally disconnected from those comments as well. I am grateful and appreciative of defense against trolls and if you are so inclined to "slay trolls" as a friend put it, please have at it.

But I would ask that if you wanted to do something on my behalf, it would be to occasionally hit 'like' or say something nice back to the people that say nice things - I simply can't keep up with it and it just feels like I'm being a complete jerk in ignoring people that way.

Dave "Not Pitbull" Red

Aw, teach. You know how to talk to people.