Senõr Gigachad: An Interview With a Spanish Meme Maker
Spanish Gigachad.
I have been an internet friend of Spanish meme maker “Hierbangas” for some time now. He started his Instagram account in October 2021 as a normal meme page would, capitalizing on the trends of the moment; both his profile picture and his first three posts were pictures of American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman. His username was originally “gang_robar_en_el_eroski_OnIG.” This was based on the English-speaking memesphere trend of naming Instagram accounts “gang_christianity,” “gang_nwo,” “gang_happiness_on_ig,” “gang_monogamy,” “gang_precious_metals,” and so forth; there is even a “news network” that reports on the community of these similarly named accounts.
Hierbangas’ particular Instagram username translates to “gang stealing in the Eroski’s,” a Spanish supermarket chain. After some time, the shoplifting gimmick started to run out, so in 2022 he branched off into vaguer topics, mostly related to illegal activities and rural life, as was expected of meme pages around this time. He then renamed himself to “@gang_tocar_hierba” (gang “touch grass,” an online insult), his current handle.
While Countere has previously produced a documentary, MOG THE WORLD, about American meme accounts like @dark_iron_gains and @based_archives, it is curious to see how the shitposting meme culture—heavily layered in irony, post-irony, and anti-globalism, and often associated with books like Bronze Age Mentality and Sun and Steel—is transformed once it changes not only region but language.
This is why I wanted to interview Hierbangas, who lives in Spain, exclusively posts memes in Spanish, and has a Spanish audience, while making many of the same jokes that dissident memesmiths use in America. I asked him five questions. Here are his answers. I fixed some of them for errata.
In this meme, there are references to seed oils, raw liver, microplastics, “goyslop,” the “vibe shift,” and the Fall of the West; also, the template itself is an imported image from American political comic strips.
What do you think of the recent changes surrounding the memesphere?
Memes had innocence back then. But now the algorithms have taken ahold of them and they have become part of this zombie doomscrolling culture. Plain humoristic images [like cat memes or Drake memes] never really got me, but now looking at them feels ever more gay. If you have the talent, don’t work for the circus of the bugman! At least go make some propaganda…
Have you seen your memes truly influence someone?
Yes. I know I have inspired some people who have gotten into fitness and outdoors after seeing my memes. And I don’t even push those hard. It really warms my heart. Making a single fatty work out feels better than the biggest of clouts.
In the least ironic way possible, what do you believe in?
Roman Catholicism. I believe that virtue and beauty will always win, for vices and lies are abundant, but earthly and mortal.
What does the future have in store for the meme shitposting culture?
I know we will find new ways. We always do. Countercultural young men always produce the freshest and most virtuous parts of media. No matter what new algorithms they put out. We always make truth blatantly visible.
Do you see it in a good light that American meme trends trickle down onto the international scenes?
Sadly, most of the time [our memes] are just translations and simplifications of Yankee stuff, no originality. When that’s not the case, they have a lot of potential.
Thus spoke Hierbangas. See more memes from his collection below.
In this meme, there is a soyjak of the Iberian lynx (an endangered animal endemic to Spain and Portugal) saying “It’s over” regarding his population’s endangered status.
In this meme, a continuation of the previous, the Iberian lynx is saying “We are back,” in regards to reports his population is now growing, completing the catchphrase “It’s So Over / We’re So Back.”
In this meme, a Southern, possibly Andalusian, Wojak who’s accustomed to farmland and drought says that it must be great to have all those forests in the North of Spain, while his Northern counterpart is agonizing over pine tree monocultures and the notorious industrial sector of the region.
This meme is a remix of the ones where Lebron refuses to stand up for the flag and instead sings glory to the Chinese Communist Party, except here Spanish Leftist politician Íñigo Errejón refuses to read Marxist literature and instead decides to read Bronze Age Mentality (as suggested by Poljak). At the bottom, he asks “Monkey in natural state never masturbates, but he does in captivity, what does that mean?” (An aphorism from the book.)
This graph is a real treat to those who can speak Spanish. It is a political compass of all the kinds of countryside the Iberian peninsula offers. It’s almost impossible to translate, as most of the entries use words and references only understandable to those who live in Spain.
In this meme, there are lyrics from a popular Spanish trap artist mentioning Mother Earth, which sparks resentment among the worshippers of Dyḗus ph₂tḗr, the daylight-sky-god in Proto-Indo-European mythology, who call him “longhoused as fuck.”
This meme is a collaboration between Hierbangas and @zorras.regular (a girly Spanish meme page). It shows an Apustaja, a variant of Pepe the Frog, as a peaceful, rural young man, while the woman opposite him wishes to be his lover, his wife, and his worst nightmare.
In this meme, famous Geoguessr enthusiast Rainbolt, who can identify various parts of the world with a single glance of the screen, is parodied by making it seem like he’s guessing the location of Galicia, a region of Spain known for cold, rain, and cows. There aren’t a lot of people there, of course.
This list of New Year’s resolutions includes getting buff and axe-picking, but also spending more time with mom, to show that our wishes are not always the most hyper-aggressive masculinity we could come up with.
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