KLTV
By Avery Niles
Published: Jan. 9, 2024 at 4:17 PM GMT-7

LONGVIEW, Texas (KLTV) - While surfing social media, you may come across one, two or maybe a dozen funny and relatable memes to make your day just a bit brighter. But one East Texas town is using those memes to get city information out to a new audience.

On Jan. 1, the City of Longview launched a new project, in the form of a Facebook group dedicated to getting information out to their community while also giving people a laugh. Richard Yeakley, the public information officer for the city, is the creator and manager of the page.

“We’re always trying to find ways to communicate effectively with our residents, sometimes that’s mailers in the mailbox, that’s videos on our TV station, right? But if you are online at all, one thing that you come across is this entirely niche idea of memes, so we thought ‘hey, let’s give that a try,” Yeakley said.

As they get details from different departments across the city such as events, services being offered, or just strictly information, they find a funny and clever way to connect it to a meme.

“For instance, we have a tech help time with the library, and I’m familiar with this meme with the IT crowd, which is ‘have you turned it off and turned it back on?’ and so just finding ways to merge the work that we’re doing with something that is already known in internet culture,” Yeakley said.

Since its launch date they have gained around 150 followers and expect that number to grow as they continue to post, and those posts get shared. The city already has a page where they share information but recognize memes aren’t for everyone.

“Government communications in general and government on social media particularly gets a bad rap about being boring. There is a subsection of people who really enjoy this sort of thing and we’re just trying to connect with those people a little bit better,” Yeakley said.

The city said they aren’t able to meme every piece of city information, so they encourage people to follow both pages to stay up to date on everything going on in Longview.