Unravel the Code/Unravel the Meme

TATTAS BE LIKE

About

Tattas-be-like is a Dutch series of memes, which shows "typical" Dutch Stereotypes in a humorous way. The meme shows various clichés, typical behaviour and catchphares associated with caucasian Dutch people.

TATTAS : (urban Dutch slang) originates from the Surinam word "patatas" (potatoes) and is used by Dutch immigrants and non-caucasians to describe caucasian Dutch people.

The Meme originates from a Facebook page, which was launched by Cid (working for Vice) on the 3rd of January 2014. According to Cid, he started the meme after seeing an image of a woman with an aggressive dog with the subscript "Tattas be like.. hij doet niets, aai ‘m maar” (translation: He does nothing, go pet him). He started with making variations of that image showing himself and sharing them on Facebook. At first he postet the images on his own Facebook page. The images started to spread quickly and reached thousands of likes within hours. Therefore he started a Tattas-be-like Facebook page, which got according to him over 100.000 likes within a week. Due to the popularity of the page, a lot of Dutch news outlets and blogs wrote about the page. (for example: http://www.vice.com/nl/read/de-bedenker-van-tattas-be-like-is-blij-met-de-zelfspot-van-nederland)

Following the popularity of Tattas-be-like a lot of similar pages/memes on different ethical groups and regions emerged. Such as Amsterdammers be like or Rotterdammerts be like.

We could find the original Tattas-be-like page, maybe it got deleted by now. The only Facebook page we found had a lot less likes, than we expected. (https://www.facebook.com/tataz?fref=ts)

Relevanz

To work with the meme Tattas-be-like was in interesting situation/starting point for us, because we are both exchange students and Tattas-be-like is a regional meme therefore we didn't know it before the first class of Digital Crafts. Since all the memes are in dutch we spend some time with google translate, trying to unterstand the meaning and the jokes. Of course a lot of the humour gets lost in the translation. Still there are some general aspects found interesting. The meme makes fun of a culture or of specific parts of that culture and at the same time it emerges, is shared and popular within that culture. Futhermore the meme appropriates the word Tattas, which originates from a non-caucasian context.

Sources and References

A similar phenomenon from vienna: When you really live in Vienna [1] And from Korea: Today Humor (which is quite difficult to handle if you don't know korean) [2]

Whatever be like

„Whatever be like“ deals with our situation of arriving in Rotterdam and getting to know the meme “Tattas be like” for the first time. Interesting about this meme is, that they are making fun of a culture and at the same time the phenomenon emerges from within the culture. It's necessary to know the culture and the language to really understand those memes. Therefore this meme is an insider joke. We were thinking about the possibility to identify with cultural stereotypes and thought about stereotypes and typical situations from our own cultures. At the same time the question of how a meme appears, develops and is translated to different contexts is important. We would like to create an analog platform for memes and invite the audience to draw, write or leave comments on sticky notes about something they find stereotypical about themselves, their or another culture. Within the three days of the exhibition we would to see and show how the drawings and comments develop and if they are influenced by each other. Maybe creating an analog meme.

• whatever be like - documentation
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