Sup memelords,

This week we’re going tactical with the biggest meme account on X.

Literally, his account is #8 on X Global Rank leaderboard, and the only meme account in the Top 10

Oh and he’s also my coworker. His name is Matt.

Matt is our in-house Meme Machine. He can literally bangs out 40-50 memes in an hour.

Today he’s sharing his tactics on growing No Context Memes to 2.2M followers (formerly known as @weirddalle), and Weird Spotify Playlist to 600k followers TWICE because the original account got banned.

He’s also running other meme pages with tens of thousands of followers. An absolute meme mad man.

We talked about:

• His meme curation tactics for X and Instagram.

• How Memelord changes his meme making strategies.

• Rejecting thousands of dollars from crypto

• Shadiest sponsored tweets request.

• The #1 tip for starting a meme account from scratch.

Before we start, here’s some new stuff we shipped this week:

• Meme Streaks: Make memes 7 days in a row and find a surprise (hint: it’s free stuff)

• Wojakifier: Our intern just shipped another meme tool. Try it out so we finally can pay him.

Oh there’s also a feature we haven’t announced yet, but I’m only telling it because it’s you. It’s called “Quickies” — make a meme in 30 seconds (that’s my quickie time alright).

Try it all for free on Memelord.com! 

Still not sure about subscribing? Hit me up and I’ll answer any of your questions.

Here’s the interview with our meme machine.

Jovian: How did you start with No Context Memes?

Matt: I had another meme account called Weird Spotify Playlist (@SpotifyWeird) for about six months.

That one was growing pretty well, and then I saw someone post an AI-generated image—I can’t even remember what it was. This was back when you could barely make out what the picture or prompt was, which made it so much funnier. I saw it and thought, “I’ll try this out myself.”

So I made a few, posted them on this brand new account called @weirddalle, left them overnight, and woke up to 12,000 followers. From there, I just scrambled to make as many as I could. I got loads of submissions, and it grew to about 900,000 followers in two and a half weeks.

At that time, it was all weird DALL·E images—no general memes like it is now.

Did you have a goal for how many posts to make per day back then?

Not really. I was still working my old job, so it depended on what I was doing in the evenings. I’d say maybe 5 to 10 posts a day early on, and if I got a lot of submissions, sometimes up to 20.

Did you ever think about what time zone you should post in?

Not at first. I just posted whenever. But in the short term, it probably helps to optimize for time zones.

For example, if I posted at midnight US time, it might take 10 minutes to hit 100 likes. If I posted in the afternoon US time, it might take two minutes. So yeah, short term it matters, but long term I don’t think posting time makes that much difference.

When did @weirddalle start becoming more of a general meme page like it is now, the “No Context Memes”?

It happened when image generators got too good. It kind of took the fun out of it.

The whole point of the account was that the images looked like nothing they were supposed to be. I was always making memes anyway, so I thought, why not just turn it into a more general meme account?

Back in 2021 or 2022, growing meme accounts used to be so easy. It’s much harder now because there’s money in it, the algorithm changed, and everyone’s competing.

When you started posting more general memes, did your strategy change?

There were definitely a lot more posts per day just because there was more content available. I usually make 40–50 memes a day. I try to post every hour and schedule overnight posts too, so it’s pretty much around the clock.

What’s your curation process like? Where do you look for memes besides Memelord?

Anywhere, really. Instagram probably has the best content, though it’s hit or miss—you search for a while and sometimes find nothing.

Reddit’s easier because of the upvote system. You can just go to a subreddit and see what’s trending that day. Then there’s Pinterest, Telegram, Discord servers, random places like that.

How do you find these memes on Telegram and Discord?

I just searched for “memes,” found one server, and then found others cross-posting into each other’s servers. I kind of hop around and try to avoid the scary white supremacy or Nazi meme groups.

Do you make a lot of your own original memes?

Yeah, especially since I started working at Memelord. I’ve been making a lot more of my own stuff because it’s just easier now. I usually use whatever new templates were added recently.

The video templates we have are great. They perform really well.

So Weird Spotify Playlist and No Context Memes weren’t your first meme accounts, right? Tell me about the others.

The first one I ever made was when I was fourteen. It was a football meme page, those terrible “Troll Football or “Top 10 Respect Moments” kinds of memes. I ran that for a while.

It was all on Instagram. I stayed mostly on Instagram until 2021. I made another meme account that hit about 150,000 followers before it got banned in 2020. They gave it back for a day, then banned me again. It is what it is.

Then I started Weird Spotify Playlist in 2021, around when I got my first full-time job. That one grew to 600,000 followers, then got banned too. The account that’s on X now is the second one, and it’s back up to 600,000 followers again.

What’s the biggest difference between growing on X versus Instagram?

When I started No Context Memes, Twitter’s algorithm was heavily based on retweets. All you had to do was ask for retweets from bigger accounts to go viral. If someone with 100,000 followers retweeted you, 100,000 people saw the post.

Instagram was different. You had to rank on hashtags, hit the Explore page, and get good watch time. There were so many little factors, like YouTube or TikTok. Instagram kind of started that whole game.

Twitter back then was simpler. Now it’s harder because they made it more like Instagram.

Have brands ever reached out for sponsored posts?

Yeah, way too often. Unfortunately, most are crypto or OnlyFans deals, which I refuse. I don’t want people losing money on shitcoins.

It’s similar to what we see on Memelord. Crypto people even made a coin using our logo.

How much were they offering?

Around ten to fifteen thousand dollars for five to ten posts. I’ve done a few sponsored posts before, non-crypto ones of course. I’ve worked with some apps, but the number of legit, non-scammy ones is very few.

Jesus that’s a lot of money you turned down. What was the first legitimate company that reached out?

The first one I took was a movie promotion. They wanted me to put DALL·E prompts related to the film and link “Coming out in theaters next week.”

They never paid me though. I followed up for three years, even contacted business regulators, but nothing.

It was only a couple hundred bucks, but that was a lot for me then. Eventually I just gave up.

Oh, that really sucks.

How do you set your prices for sponsored posts?

I try to get as much information as possible before quoting. I’ll ask what product they want to promote, what the post would look like, if there’s an external link, or if it’s just tagging them on X. Then I decide if it’s something I agree with.

There’s a lot of shady stuff out there. I get asked some weird things.

What’s the shadiest request you’ve ever received?

It’s for a fetish website. It’s a website where you can sell pictures for a specific fetish, but in reality no one would actually buy them.

The platform made money by getting people to sell photos to no one. The “customers” were actually the sellers. That was the weirdest request.

Are you running any other meme pages now?

Yeah, I run one with a friend. He has an idea page, and we’re both into country folk music. We post memes and edits around that. It’s called Country Music Goes Hard. It’s doing pretty well, around 85,000 followers since March.

It’s mostly meme videos here. Do you find video memes harder to make?

It was before, but it’s easier now with Memelord.

I actually think video memes are funnier than static ones. I don’t know if that’s new or if it’s always been like that. There’s a new movie every week that people clip front to back and turn into memes. It’s hilarious. Maybe it started with Breaking Bad or American Psycho.

Before we have Memelord video library, where did you find meme videos?

Usually TikTok or Instagram. I’d see a meme using a template, then scour the internet trying to find a clean version to crop. It usually took me a long time. Sometimes I just gave up.

With Memelord, if a video goes viral, it’s there instantly. Makes my life easier.

That must have been super time consuming before.

Yeah, especially on TikTok where quality is often low and you can never find the original that looked great.

Are you currently running other personal meme accounts on X?

Yeah, you know me, I’m always creating new ones. I’m still running Weird Spotify Playlist. Strange Duolingo Sentences was big for a while, but content was limited, only whenever Duolingo added something stupid.

I used to run Technically the Truth, which was memes that were kind of dumb but technically true. One of our biggest posts got two million likes. It was someone asking for help identifying a bird, and someone replied, “That’s a bird.”

Right now my favorite is @kitchencels, based on the r/kitchencels subreddit. I’ve been running it for about a month. It’s hilarious.

How do you come up with all these ideas for new accounts?

Whenever I see something interesting, I think, “Can I turn this into a meme account?” That’s pretty much it. I also love analytics.

Watching the numbers go up is weirdly fun for me. Because I’m a mad.

Okay that’s interesting. How do you think about analytics beyond follower count?

I look at all the stats. People on Twitter now obsess over engagement because that’s what gets you paid. But I think the more interesting metric is bookmarks.

Bookmarks are huge. If a post gets lots of bookmarks, it gets shown to more people. It means people want to come back to it. That’s when I know I should post more of that kind of content.

Recently, Fortnite memes have been blowing up. Every post about the new season gets thousands of bookmarks.

Can you give an example of how you use that data?

On X, if something gets a lot of replies, I’ll post more of that, but replies are often negative. That’s why rage bait works so well. More outrage means more money.

But I’d rather post things people enjoy. If you keep posting what people like, you get followers and kind messages, not angry ones.

What kind of memes that don’t get massive engagement but get tons of bookmarks?

Yeah, usually niche ones. I like posting about wrestling or games like Madden and Fortnite. Those always get bookmarked. When you connect with a niche audience, you get real support. You get bookmarks, followers, and nice DMs.

My favorite was last year, a WWE meme about Cody Rhodes. It kicked off the whole #WeWantCody movement. I posted so many Cody memes and made a bunch of friends in the wrestling space through that.

That’s what most big pages miss. They post rage bait or fake stuff, but niche memes build real communities. You might get fewer likes, but you gain higher-quality followers.

If someone wanted to start a meme account from scratch, what advice would you give?

I would say pick a niche to begin with. I only got millions of followers for No Context Memes because I already had followers from the weird DALL-E niche.

All my other pages, like @spotifyweird, @kitchencels, and @countrymusicgoes hard, are all niche.

Find something you love, see what others in that space are doing, and figure out how you can do it better.

If someone is posting Simpsons Funny Moments, don’t post the same twenty clips everyone else does. Find moments people have forgotten about.

Find your niche, study it, and figure out how to stand out.

That’s the story of Matt the Meme Machine.

If you’re wondering about the picture, that’s actually him in a wrestling mask. He’s a huge wrestling fan.

Follow him on No Context Memes.

Want to try out building a meme account on Instagram on X? Try out Memelord.com.

You won’t be disappointed.

If you like this piece, I’d love to hear from you!

Follow me @jovvvian or hit me up on LinkedIn if you’re nasty.

Thanks for reading memelords.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jovian “The Child Labor” Gautama

VP of Memes at Memelord.com