This Week in Irony: competitively spirited

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The day after Duke’s too-awesome-for-adjectives win over UNC, Carolina fans were hardly the only ones hurting. Through stories, I’ve heard about various mob-related injuries and dramatic tales of people thinking they’d meet death by stampede.

Somewhere along the sprint from the main quad—the first major scene of West Campus celebrations—to Cameron—where droves of students swarmed in anticipation of the return of the team bus, it occurred to me that this was no ordinary expression of school spirit. When the mob arrived at the scene behind Cameron, shoves were thrown left and right as people struggled to get the best view. When the players arrived, the crowd descended upon them with such fervor that I got lifted and moved by the throng of bodies. Far from being a simple celebration, this was a competition of the dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest variety.

At its core, Duke pride is about asserting Duke’s dominance over other schools. At Duke, this external competitiveness has been ironically become an internal one as well. In other words, we are competitive about being competitive (or, by another name, spirited).

A similar observation can be made about the Duke Memes phenomenon that erupted on Facebook this week. Although it’s not clear exactly how the memes page attained such an astronomical degree of popularity, I feel it’s fair to say that the answer, at least in part, has to deal with school spirit. We enjoy pointing out the things that only a Duke would understand—the stuff of a distinctive community.

The page not only exploded with memes, but also with commentary and criticism about the supposed improper usage of memes. People took it upon themselves to judge what memes they did or did not like (often being especially vocal about the latter type). Again, we were competitive about being spirited (a type of external competition).

Perhaps this is sort of healthy competition is a fluke we happened to see twice this week. Or, maybe it’s just part of the Duke culture. Regardless, I (personally, at least) wouldn’t have it any other way.