Teenagers hit back at meme attack claims

Memes making jokes about teachers on Facebook pages are causing angst around the country. Photo / Supplied

Rotorua teenagers have hit back at claims they are attacking fellow students and teachers at the city's high schools.

Students at each of Rotorua's high schools have created meme pages on social networking website Facebook, which have been described as "hate crimes" by a local principal.

The online craze sees pictures posted on the meme pages captioned with something thought to be funny within that particular community.

The pages have been set up for all of Rotorua's high schools. A Rotorua memes page has also been set up on Facebook, which has nearly 350 likes and a New Zealand memes page has been created, which has more than 38,400 likes.

Last week John Paul College principal Patrick Walsh described the pages as "hate crimes" and said it was disappointing students were attacking their peers and teachers.

Most of the pages now have disclaimers which state the memes are not intended to be offensive.

Shortly after an article was published in The Daily Post on Saturday, this post appeared on the Rotorua Girls' High School memes page: "daily post article front page today about mr walsh and jpcs meme page, i saw mrs joyce will be keeping an eye on these pages, ok with this page ive been trying to keep the offensive ones off and thought i was doing ok with that but if anyone finds any of these offensive just let me know and i will take them off".

A link to The Daily Post article was also posted on the Western Heights High School memes page which attracted several comments including: "these images are not meant to be hateful, they are designed to point out the truth in a witty way".