“In Ukraine we don’t say ‘news in English,’ we say ‘grab me the Kyiv Post,’ and I think that’s beautiful.”
That could be a meme on the newly-created Instagram account “In Ukraine we don’t say,” which makes fun of the country’s local mentality and has become a recent hit among Ukrainians online.
After emerging in France as the “In France they don’t say” meme in 2013, it later grew into an international joke that focuses on linguistic peculiarities of different nations. The Ukrainian version, however, took the joke further to ridicule not only the language, but also Ukrainian life.
Initially created on Twitter, the Ukrainian meme reached wide popularity on Instagram. There, it has already gained over 103,000 followers since its launch on Aug. 24, Ukraine’s Independence Day.
Each meme describes a certain ridiculous or funny situation, tradition or mindset from the life of Ukrainians, contrasting it with a more progressive or reasonable approach often seen in the West. For instance, how locals downplay mental health issues, suggesting to “sweat them out” instead of entering therapy, or how fixed Ukrainian moms are on traditional homemade food, refusing to learn about modern vegan or gluten-free diets.
The meme starts with the words “In Ukraine we don’t say“ along with a statement in English and is followed by ”we say” and a funny statement in Ukrainian. Every meme ends with the phrase “and I think that’s beautiful.”
For example, “In Ukraine parents don’t say ‘creative career,’ they say ‘when will you finally find a normal job, like ordinary people do?’ – and I think that’s beautiful.”
The parts in Ukrainian often use conversational expressions, local sayings and Surzhyk, a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian widely used here, which makes the situations even more relatable and recognizable.
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The creator of the Ukrainian meme, marketing specialist Yulia Pareniuk, first saw the foreign version of it on Twitter and decided to spread it in her home country. As for coming up with jokes about Ukraine, she says she was inspired by real-life situations and conversations in her own life, Ukrainian culture in general, idioms, lines in songs and quotes from public figures.
Pareniuk says that, although the memes make fun of Ukrainian reality, their actual purpose is to promote and spread everything Ukrainian.
She says that the Ukrainian nation has a great sense of humor, which it maintained through all of its difficult history – centuries of occupation and repressions by a number of empires.
“This is one of Ukraine’s strongest qualities — the ability to overcome anything with the help of humor,” Pareniuk told the Kyiv Post.
Pareniuk used to come up with all of the memes on her own. Now that her page is a hit on Instagram, about a third of the memes she posts are suggested by followers.
Since Ukrainians took such a fancy to the memes, Pareniuk is now developing the page’s merchandise, like T-shirts and phone cases with the most popular jokes.
