What does a high school dean and Chef Boyardee’s Spaghetti and Meatballs have in common? If you ask anyone outside of Riverside Brookfield, nothing at all. But here, the two combined hold special meaning to everyone in the community.

Over the past few years, Riverside Brookfield has had its very own social media presence called Dughetti Spaghetti, named after one of the school’s deans, Neil Dughetti.

Primarily active on Instagram, the @dughettispaghettiofficial account posts funny memes and videos relating to the school, and incorporates students, staff members, and events. Anyone can send in their own memes and videos that they’d like to be featured, and if lucky, Dughetti Spaghetti will post their creation and credit them.

The user(s) of the account is/are unknown, but it is widely assumed that the admin holds the account until they graduate, and then passes it on to a younger student. The current users of the account started off as fans, and would submit memes of their very own to the former user.

“Yes, we followed it. We did supply memes, multiple times, and have had our memes rejected multiple times,” said the current Dughetti Spaghetti admins, all current RB students who operate as one entity.

The true history of the account is unknown, and although the current admins had learned the former account holder’s name after being gifted the account, they did not know them personally and have since forgotten their name. The former user would take memes sent to them and post them in the morning, similar to what the current account does now. However, they themselves are unsure of who originated the social media account all those years ago, and its past remains shrouded in mystery. 

To obtain the account, the current Dughetti Spaghetti had at first tried to rival the success of the original. 

“We weren’t chosen, we made ourselves chosen by continuously posting memes on a separate account, previously called ‘dughettispaghetti.v2.’ We were then roasted [insulted] by the main [account], then received an apology and [they] told us they were cool with us continuing the legacy,” Dughetti Spaghetti said.

Previously held by only one user, the current holder of the account has since created a team of users, who now all work as a team, with each different individual possessing a different role.

“[User] 1 created the idea of running this account and watches [over the others]. He keeps everything in balance. [User] 2 edits memes, [and at] many times creates them if we as a whole group have an idea. [User] 3 is popular in school and tells us what we should post about. [User] 4 follows after [users] 3 and 2, and helps keep [user] 1 in power by keeping everything stable between the four of us,” Dughetti Spaghetti said. 

Unfortunately, the name Dughetti Spaghetti has not always been synonymous with positivity. Former users have been criticized in the past for disrespecting staff members, and even now does the current account receive backlash for some of its posts.

“When we respond to criticism we try to leave our opinions out of it and just have facts speak for themselves . . . if a student is in trouble for a meme he/she posted we take it down immediately. If a student genuinely feels personally attacked by our memes and has actual reasoning, we take it down,” Dughetti Spaghetti said.

The current account has attempted to be more careful, and refuses to post offensive material that targets a student for being different, nor material that severely insults or jeopardizes the jobs of any staff member. 

The account content is meant to be satirical, and many staff members know of the current account and have mixed feelings about it. Some do lean into the joke though, and the account’s namesake – Neil Dughetti –  even wore a Dughetti Spaghetti costume at school this past Halloween.

Either way, the current holders assure that the goal of Dughetti Spaghetti is not to be hurtful, but to have fun and spark interaction within the RB community. They try their best to make sure that their content is of the utmost quality, and it’s hard to imagine RB without Dughetti Spaghetti, for both students and staff members alike.

“I genuinely feel lately we haven’t been doing a good job, and we recently had a check on the memes we’ve been posting lately. We try to keep quality, meaningful memes, and try to stay active within the community, without doing harm to anyone,” Dughetti Spaghetti said.

The main account on Instagram @dughettispaghettiofficial currently has 1,174 followers at the time of this writing, and it also has a Twitter account that you can follow @DughettiS.