If you have been on Tumblr any time during the last week, you have probably seen memes starring a red school locker. You might assume that this Tumblr trend is associated with the (almost) end of the school year as your news feed get bombarded with prom and graduation photos. But there is actually a real story behind how this locker took Tumblr by storm, and you won't believe how its rise to fame happened.
The locker is property of the NAD, School of Digital Arts, Animation and Design - UQAC (VFX & VG), which is located in Montreal, Canada. It went from being a lonely and forgotten about home for school books to becoming an Internet sensation thanks to a prank that got the attention of the entire school.
A spokesperson for the school told BuzzFeed that the prank first started when two students are believed to have taken the locker from the basement and placed it out into the open hallways.
NAD student Florence shared the story along with photos of the prank on her Tumblr, revealing that things first began at the beginning of the semester when students decided to move it at random places. As the semester progressed, the locker prank "became a lot more intense," she writes.
Eventually the principal caught wind of what was going on and told the students to show some respect for school property and to act more maturely.
This made the locker go from being viral just in school to viral online. That's because students turned the school locker into memes that exploded on Tumblr.
There is the Titanic locker sinking in the ocean one, the Trump wall of lockers, the Force Awakens locker lightsaber, and the Tony Hawk locker skateboard. And these are just a few. Students just kept the memes coming, with someone going as far to make a video starring the locker.
After the locker came "a third rate meme" on the platform, Florence made sure to inform us that the memes she shared are only a small portion of the ones that were created.
"So if you're wondering why this reference hasn't been done yet, trust me, it was. I just didn't show it to spare people an overly long post," she writes. "That's what happens when you put a bunch of exhausted, over-caffeinated, meme-drived students together..."
And while the principal was not pleased at first, teachers reportedly encouraged students to keep the locker memes alive. At the school's end of the semester party, the spotlight was on the locker as it joined the stage as projects were presented in the school's theatre.
The locker's fame might fizzle as the semester ends, but we bet students will continue this tradition next year.
