Personal Narrative Essay: iFunny App

Since early the early 2000’s comedy and “memes” have been on the uprise even more so with the upbringing of smartphones allowing widespread communication. The app iFunny was created and released on November 25, 2011 with the intent on making jokes and comedy widely available to its members. I joined the app in 2014 and was able to meet and enhance friendships just by sharing jokes from the app. From its creation iFunny has become the source of internet memes and jokes that have spread globally, leading to many new memories to share with friends, and has become broader in variety over the last few years.

I first joined the app because of a few of my friends, and I didn’t know what to think other than there are jokes on here that they mention and bring up at times. I looked at the reviews and they were all saying good things and that it was worth a download to waste some time. One review read, “iFunny is cool and epic. Yeah, it’s a bit political but I have made some great friends on this app. I’m glad that saying something on iFunny won’t get you canceled like on Twitter” (Sensortower.com). When I first loaded the app up, I was meet by a screen that read features with a certain number of features at the top and to swipe left to see content and so I did. When the number hit zero there would be an animated check mark that would pop up and disappear shortly after, and I tapped the word feature and it brought down a series of list and a timer for the next “set” as my friends called it. It was mostly picture jokes that were shared and every now and then there would be a GIF in the cycle.

In between the sets me and my friends would go into the section called collective  which was almost the same as featured but ones that not everyone saw and it would go on for what felt like forever until you left. A couple of years later some new features came out that allowed you to post videos and audio that really changed the game of gaining subscribers. It was all still joke’s and memes that now we could share some clips with each other. Every day we would get together and sit and look at the stuff that came up in the feature tab and share it whilst having a laugh. As another year or two went by they had released a section called explore where you could search for tags or even accounts that you wanted to look up if you wanted to look for something directly when you couldn’t find it.

 My friends had started their own accounts and it allowed them to create and share their own content. Each week we would see who was getting ahead with their subscriber counts and it was almost neck and neck while the comment section started to clutter. When looking at some of the comments of their post we got to see how far spread that it had gotten from other parts of the US to Europe and some parts of Asia. We had thought that it would show our jokes through just our country, but it turned out to be more than that. After seeing those comments, I questioned where people were from and seeing that people where in other countries really surprised me to see that they could connect from that far away and see our post. It has currently reached over 62 different countries in the world (sensortower.com).

In the same span they released large scale chats and a map. These chats allowed communities to for that were dedicated to specific things that the person wanted and effectively created different genres of memes. The chats had many people connect form different countries as well and allowed messages and memes to spread more privately but still freely. My friends and I joined a chat and it was dedicated to GIF’s of people getting hurt in funny ways (yes I know it’s not ethically right), but one of the major people in the chat was from Europe and got along with everyone. We never shared our actual name to uphold anonymity, but we all shared the same humor and shared some memories in the chat. Now the map was more directed at locality and allowed you to see what users you were around and posting. You would be able to connect to that account and see what they were posting and furthermore talk with them using a chat to get to know them. I personally have not used the feature, but I glance into it every now and then to see what is around. 

I am happy that I joined the community on the app with my friends as we have met many people. I have been exposed to new jokes and developing trends over the years and still enjoy chatting with people from other countries. Now it’s no longer just jokes and memes, but some people show their work and talents and others show animals that have developed into large communities that everyone enjoys. To this day my friends and I still share jokes with each other when were together. I even see jokes and memes on other social media platforms from iFunny showing its outreach among different communities.