Fukkard: Meet the meme engineers

Hyderabad: Memes are what social media runs on these days and have taken the platform by storm. From providing a regular dose of humour, these images with funny text reflect the trends and the world around us, with each of the memes speaking more than thousands words. Some of them are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases and […]

Hyderabad: Memes are what social media runs on these days and have taken the platform by storm. From providing a regular dose of humour, these images with funny text reflect the trends and the world around us, with each of the memes speaking more than thousands words. Some of them are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases and witty posts.

So what does it take to build a meme factory itself? Ask BTech graduates Arun and Anand, who launched ‘Fukkard’ in 2014 when they stopped resisting the intolerant, lonely and sombre world around them.

“The journey into making films might take a little longer, but telling stories to people was never a barrier. We thought we just needed a platform. Story could be a daily activity, the mood at the workplace or even the fuss that we experience while we untangle an earphone. The early memes started with simple ones. As we dived deep into subjects including cinema and cricket, followers grew exponentially,” they said.

With examples like All India Bakchod before them, Arun said they chose to go for innovative content for the Telugu audience. “For a meme maker, it’s important to have the knack to know the pulse of the public, awareness on the trends, social, political, cricket – anything that has potential to create buzz on social media,” he says. Meme makers are mushrooming with thousands of them already vying for space on social media. Arun and Anand weren’t aware of the market when they started Fukkard with a few random posts in 2014.

“Memes creators usually stick to one genre, say political or cinema or cricket, current affairs, etc. Fukkard doesn’t stick to one thing. It was intended to troll bad films and encourage independent cinema. A few tools, apps that helped with photo collage, texts and fonts came handy initially. Not to mention the popular comical expressions of comedian Brahmanandam. Within eight months, followers started increasing for Fukkard. Posts on IPL fixtures and crucial tennis matches with Roger Federer too increased our base,” they said.

Fukkard has 562k followers on Instagram and 139k followers on Twitter, which Arun says is the most for any Telugu meme page.

Six years after dabbling with filmmaking, the two say their dream to make a film hasn’t died down. For the time being, their idea of making memes has fetched reasonable money to sustain them in the city.

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