On the outside, Joseph Yomtoubian seems like any average Joe. Grew up in Los Angeles, received his MBA and consults for large company’s finance department. What may surprise you is that he started and runs some of the largest meme pages on Instagram. Which ones you may ask? He does not like to reveal all of them, but they total over 8 million followers with a large celebrity and cult following. The ones he is willing to disclose are @TheTinderBlog @Laughing.Chicks @TheBasicDrunk and @MemesbyJoe
Joseph began his journey into creating his first meme page @TheTinderBlog about 4 years ago while he was at the gym with a friend. Joseph disclosed some of his dating stories and the friend recommend that Joseph create a page to share some of his dating conversations/stories that went awry. Shortly after creating the page, Joseph ran out of material which is when he decided to pivot from a dating page, to a meme page.
A few months after converting to a meme page, @TheTinderBlog had grown to over a thousand followers and had its “big break” when @Elitedaily shared one of his memes which drew attention to this page. After growing to a few thousand followers, Joseph came close to not posting anymore and shutting the page down; he didn’t feel fulfilled and the page was barely growing. However, he received a message from a follower who stated “I am in Medical School and some days, I come home crying, but your page posts some of the most extra stuff and makes my day better.” That one message is the reason he decided to continue with the page. Overtime, the @TheTinderblog grew and has amassed cult following and is on track to exceed 2 Million followers this summer and is now organically growing 150,000 followers per month.
Why create other pages along the way? “Diversify, it’s the first thing we learned in finance. Your page can be shutdown at any point and then what? You are back to square one, this way, I have a few backup plans.”
It is important to note that while he does not disclose his identity on any of the pages, his personal page @IamJoyo has amassed a sizeable following with minimal posts. When asked about this he laughed and says “hashtag and locations hacks make a difference”.
Joseph has broken many stereotypes of what an influencer is. He is well educated, has a career and treats his large Instagram following as a hobby. He embraces the fact that his post bring joy to people’s lives.