By: Madeleine Chan, Staff Writer
With over 1,100 followers on Instagram, @sfu_raccoons has become a hit hub for showcasing SFU’s favourite furry friends. I interviewed the person behind @sfu_raccoons to get the inside scoop on their growing social-media stardom; their first post was made in October 2019 and they’ve only grown since. To preserve the mystery behind the account, they have chosen to stay anonymous.
Why did you start @sfu_raccoons?
That’s a good question. My friends actually were always making fun of me because I was just constantly always recording the raccoons in residence, just on my story on my own Instagram. And after a while I was kind of like, “I have a lot of pictures in my camera, my story always has raccoons on it at some point,” and I thought, “There used to be raccoon Instagrams [ . . . ] Maybe I should start one.”
I’ve seen those other accounts, and they don’t have nearly as many followers as you do. What do you think makes your account stand out from theirs?
It’s largely in part just consistency. I think in the beginning, I was definitely posting a lot. There [was] a staff-in-residence, and he sent me this Google Drive with all of these pictures that he’d taken [of raccoons] in residence and I was like, “Whoa, okay, this is cool.” So in the beginning, a lot of them were those, and then just ones I had on my phone. So I think the fact that I just posted a lot helped. And it got shared around really fast too.
Yeah, you have over a thousand [followers], that’s crazy.
Yeah, it kind of blew up. I didn’t think it was going to.
What’s your favourite raccoon meme? Either that you’ve posted or you’ve seen around?
I think I have two. It was actually the very first one I ever posted: Chonk. Because he was just sitting on the steps and he kind of seemed slumped over [ . . . ] The other one I really like is, I think it’s just a screenshot of a Twitter post, and it was like “me during the day” — I’m going to be healthy, I’m going to start eating right. Then it was “me by 2:00 p.m.”, and it was to the Doordash guy and it said “Give me the gorbage” with a really fat raccoon and I was like, “That’s literally me.”
Along the same lines, do you have a favourite SFU raccoon?
It’s probably Chonk.
I know there’s been that one tailless boy, he’s just around. And i’ll just randomly get submissions from people where they’re like, “Oh my God, it’s the tailless boy,” and he’s just always around and he seems to be particularly, what’s the word, rebellious, I guess. The first time I ever saw him I was coming up the stairs towards Images [Theatre] and I just saw his butt sticking out and I didn’t see a tail so I was like, “Is this a koala bear?” Like I literally didn’t know what it was. I kind of turned the corner and he looked at me and I was like, “Oh my God, it’s a raccoon.” Those are the two that really stick out.
So the account is mainly run by direct message (DM) submissions, right?
Yep.
Have you ever gotten any weird DM’s that you couldn’t post? Or just totally left field DM’s?
I think they’re the most recent ones that I got, actually. I was actually kind of curious I was like, “What am I going to do with these?”
I ended up just posting them. It’s raccoons having sex on the balcony in Townhouses. At least it looked kind of PG, you can just kind of see the one behind the other. I was like, “Aw, man.” And I got three of them from different people and they were like, “I also saw the raccoons having sex.”
Okay, you guys are recording this, it’s one thing for me to [say], “Look at this.” They’re the ones stopping in the middle of their walk to campus and are like, “Let’s record these raccoons doing it.” But yeah, [I’ve gotten] nothing that wasn’t raccoon related.
That’s good. So, how do you come up with the captions?
In the beginning, some of them were just a commentary [on their actions]. Some of them are references to either pop culture or just other memes that I’m like, “that’s kind of funny” [ . . . ] There was one where the raccoon was right up to the camera and I was like, “Mr. Gorbachev, boop that nose,” or something stupid like that. But yeah, sometimes I struggle, and I just make something stupid.
Fair enough. If you could somehow speak to a raccoon and have it understand you, what would you say?
Such a funny question. My instinct would be, “Do you wanna be my friend?” Or “Do you wanna be my pet?” Why do they always do weird stuff with their hands [like rubbing them together]? But yeah, I really don’t know what I’d ask a raccoon. But is he smart? Would it be like talking to a kid, or an adult? There’s too many variables involved in thinking of a raccoon being able to talk.
Which side will you be on when the raccoons inevitably overthrow us and take over the Burnaby campus?
I feel like I’ll be the one leading the charge.
Right at the forefront?
Yeah. You know how the Lorax speaks for the trees? That would be me, but with raccoons.
Some people would say that these kinds of memes, and this kind of normalization of raccoons,, invite people to get closer to them, potentially putting them at risk. What do you think about this idea?
I remember this smear campaign that went out against the raccoons, I think it was in The Peak. I saw that and I was like, “This anti-raccoon propaganda!” I was not happy. I feel like most people are smart enough not to go up to the raccoons directly. Like yes, they’re cute. But at least so far I haven’t gotten any submissions where the people were going right up to them or putting their hand out or anything. So I mean if you’re taking videos from afar, I don’t see the harm in that. I think it’s pretty common sense not to be like, “Hi, let me pet this wild animal.” But [where I work,] we do get calls from people, they’re typically drunk, that have gone up [to them] and they’re sitting with security getting bandaged up. Don’t pet the raccoons, man.
What do you think Chonker is doing right now?
I’m really sad about Chonkers because he used to always sit on those steps that are between Towers and Dining Hall. There’s been some habitat destruction that’s been going on because of all the construction in residence. So those stairs are completely destroyed, they’ve cut down all the bushes where baby raccoons always used to come out and chill. So Chonk’s steps are no longer there and I haven’t seen him around and I’m actually kind of worried. He would just sit there and act cute and people would bring him food, and I was like, “What a good guy.” I was always looking forward to seeing him every time I leave Dining Hall and go down the steps to be like, “Chonk?” But, yeah I haven’t seen him. I hope he’s thriving.
Did you have anything you wanted to say?
UBC just followed me, and their thing is @ubc.forbidden.cats. I [thought], “You only have 40 followers! Well, that’s a shame.” But their thing is new, it started in December. They’re funny, it just seems like it was a response to [@sfu_raccoons]. But also good to know that UBC also has raccoons. I followed them back because I thought that I [was] not going to continue this war between the schools, because this is about the raccoons, and not about us.
You hope to bring people together through raccoons?
Yeah, literally. We are going to foster peace and diplomatic relations between the raccoons of our campuses. That’s a little dramatic, but yeah.
