Started by two brothers, Max and Jack Barrett in 2019, the “Almost Friday” phenomenon began as part of an account on Instagram where the Barretts’ promoted party and drinking content on their page in an attempt to advertise their media brand through comedic imagery with funny, satirical captions. Now, they’ve grown it into a multimedia brand with over 2.2 million followers on Instagram, with their Almost Friday account having over 408,000 followers.
In an effort to make something similar in regards to comedic, nonsensical content that brings people together, Deep Run students have a few “Almost Friday” accounts of their own, @drhsalmostfriday and @newdrhsalmostfriday2024, on Instagram. These accounts share photos submitted by students and use the same font and format as the popular original.
Shortly before this, there were a few different Instagram pages dedicated to the same idea of bringing people together through feature-esque images. One might remember the ‘slumped’ pages where students would submit photos of other students sleeping during class time or on campus, highlighting a particular student rather than an entire student body like the Almost Friday accounts do.
The first Wildcat Almost Friday Instagram page to come about was @drhsalmostfriday, which surfaced sometime this year in January, and took a hiatus during the beginning of the current school year. Afterward, @newdrhsalmostfriday2024 took over for a short time before both the accounts were regularly posting content each Thursday.
(Frank Romero, Aaron Jamaleldine, Jerry Simon, Eisa Syed) (Photo courtesy of: the @drhsalmostfriday Instagram Account)
“Almost Friday is a way for the student body to express what’s going on every week,” the student behind @drhsalmostfriday said.
Each account claims to stray from a bias in terms of posting the same friend group repeatedly, but it’s difficult to work around.
“[The original Deep Run account’s] pictures had the same friend group; we wanted to create an account where anyone could send in pictures and be posted,” the student behind @newdrhsalmostfriday2024 said.
Both of the accounts claim to not be affiliated with one another and even hint at a possible rivalry.
“The other [account] is run by a freshman who is trying to compete,” the student behind @drhsalmostfriday said.
There’s a routine process that goes into each “Almost Friday” post, and it’s different depending on the account. Additionally, the inner-workings of the accounts are anonymous, and the people who run them are unspecified, with owners preferring to remain anonymous at the time of publication.
The original account is run by just one person, who inherited it from DRHS alum Zaara Ahmed. The newer account claims to be run by a “group of five people that will reveal themselves at graduation.” This anonymity leaves a lot of people guessing as to who might be the person or people responsible for these accounts that represent Deep Run on social media platforms.
Deep Run Almost Friday offers a much wider perspective into the Deep Run community from a student perspective, as well as emphasizing a much larger picture of the student body both inside and outside campus.
