Mockery Like This: CU Campaign Sparks Mock Memes

The Christian Union’s annual mission week is well under way.

The ‘love like this…’ posters and logos are making their mark upon the city as part of the CU’s outreach project to the wider student body across all colleges.

One of the original CU campaign posters

However, in response to the CU’s posters, parodies from disgruntled students have been made. From ‘Gove like this…’ to ‘Dove like this…’, the joke versions are circulating on Facebook in a separate campaign of their own.

Peter Blenkharn, the man behind the rogue rebuttal posters explained to the Tab how he came up with the idea, “The [CU’s] marketing campaigns are just downright hilarious. “LOVE LIKE THIS…insert picture of firefighter?… “I spotted a couple of friends from college sporting the latest OICCU insignia and took some inspiration from a friend’s parody of last year’s “Born Loved” campaign – “Born Gloved”.

He suggests that underneath the joke campaign lies some serious frustration at the actions of CU, “The talks, while not predominantly attended by non-Christians are as far from academic discourse on the topic of faith as they could be, more a doctrinal lecture. Clearly OICCU doesn’t represent all Christianity in Oxford, but what it does represent is a worrying erosion of intellectual discourse which celebrates challenge of ideas”.

And what of the response to his posters so far? Peter told the Tab, “Most people seem to have seen it as what it is, satire. A couple of people have expressed that they feel OICCU has been unfairly singled out or that they don’t seem to understand why it deserves to be mocked. Largely the response has been a good few giggles, which is why I did it in the first place!”

Jon Hunt, the Worcester student organising the CU week explained to the Tab how the campaign slogan came about, “Jesus’s expression of love, in dying the death that we deserved, is so important and wonderful that it needs to be shared. The wording isn’t as important as the message, and exists only to point people towards him”.

He dismissed the mock responses, saying “Some of the parodies of the publicity are actually quite funny. We’ve had a whole range of reactions to the week and these mock responses are only a small part of them”.

The ‘Love Like This campaign continues throughout 4th week. For more info, click here.