Balkan Memes

About

Balkan Memes are a series of image macros, exploitable images, captioned pictures and other media about countries and people in the Balkan Peninsula. The memes are usually made by online users from the Balkans with the purpose of mocking, insulting, or bantering about other Balkan countries.

History

The Balkans are a region in southeastern Europe named for the Balkan Mountains stretching from Bulgaria to Slovenia. Countries in the Balkans include Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia (formerly Macedonia), Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia. Greece and Turkey are sometimes considered part of the region.

One of the most recent conflicts in the Balkans are the Yugoslav Wars from the 1990s and early 2000s. The impact of genocide, ethnic cleansing, destruction, and war crimes during these conflicts lingers on in the region.

Spread

Leftover sentiments from wars and other tensions in the Balkans led to hyper-nationalistic videos and memes that often feature broken English. The earliest found Balkan-style meme was found on a June 14th, 2005 blog post^[1] from user albania-city on the French website Skyrock (shown below, left). Tensions from conflicts between other countries spilled onto YouTube as well, with a video^[2] promoting Macedonia and insulting Greece being posted on January 22, 2007. In fourteen years, it received over 80,000 views (shown below, right).

Some early Balkan memes are loosely associated with the Balkan rap/hip-hop scene. An October 3rd, 2008 article^[3] noted the popularity of late rapper Tupac Shakur in Eastern Europe and in 2010, the Remove Kebab meme came about, mentioning that "Tupac [is] Alive In Serbia." A video related to Tupac and Serbia was uploaded^[4][5] as early as July 3rd, 2012 before being deleted. A reupload has gained^[6] over 100,000 views on YouTube (shown below).

Balkan memes surged in popularity in the late 2010s as users mocked and imitated the hyper-nationalistic of certain Balkan memes. A related subreddit, r/BalkanPeopleInternet, was banned^[7] in June 2020 for violating^[8] Reddit's rules against promoting hate.

Stereotypes

Croatian Fascists

Croatia is usually portrayed as a fascist or national socialist state due to the country's history and its severe laws. Memes about Croatia also make fun of its nationalists who do not consider Croatia part of the Balkans (examples shown below).^[9]

Slovenian Femboys

Memes about Slovenia often portray Slovenian men as femboys or hardcore LGBT members, due to it being the first Eastern European country that allowed same-sex marriages (examples shown below).^[10]

Turkroach

Turkish posters gained on 4chan the identity of "Turkroaches" due to a copypasta comparing Turks to cockroaches (shown below, left).^[11] This caused the country being often portrayed in memes as inhabited by cockroaches or humanoid cockroaches (shown below, right).

Serbian Irredentism

Serbian memes often mock the nationalists' desire of expanding the borders and conquering neighboring countries. These usually reference Serbia's claim to Kosovo,^[12] as well as the Serbia Stronk / Remove Kebab memes (example shown below).

Monkeydonia

Macedonians are often potrayed as monkeys and apes in memes. The country's national identity is also mocked, by saying that its history, language and ancestry is stolen from its surrounding nations (examples shown below).

Bulgarian Mongols

In a very similar way to how Finnish people are portrayed in the Finngolia meme, Bulgarians are also depicted as Mongolians or of Asiatic ethnicity, due to the country being a Mongol vassal in its past history (examples shown below).^[13]

Monteniggas

Montenegrins are known for joking about their country's name sounding like a racial slur towards black people (examples shown below).^[14]

Gayreeks

"Gayreece" or "Gayreek" are common online insults towards Greek users or Greece. While there are some similar ones for other Balkan countries (i.e. "Turgay", "Bulgayria", "Analbania" etc…), it stuck as a signature for Greece in particular. It is rumored that the insult was made by Turkish and Albanian nationalists (examples shown below).^[15]

Albania

Albanians are often known online for being extremely nationalistic and displaying exaggerate examples of bravado and machismo (examples shown below).

Bosnia

Bosnians and Bosnia itself are portrayed as a possibly unreal and bizarre Muslim country, as well as its coastline being part of Croatia's borders (examples shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References