“My account is actually a pre-university student who is truant to smoke a jonko (joint) in a local döner house,” says the owner of the meme account ‘Hetiseenhefla’ on the phone. When I ask the man on the phone who he is, he replies: “I’m Omar. I’m a rapper.” The 32-year-old rapper Ome Omar, real name Omar Dahmani, runs the Instagram account Hefla (deep guttural-H), which means “party” in Moroccan Arabic. The page with nearly 33,000 followers provides news photos of the lingua franca of the street.
During a fiery debate in the House of Representatives, Sigrid Kaag puts her hands in the air and the accompanying text: „Weg, gone, loesoe.” ‘Loesoe’ is slang for leaving. Around her are outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte, former Defense Minister Ank Bijleveld and State Secretary for Justice and Security Ankie Broekers-Knol. Broekers-Knol responds with: “Very scary loesoe”. ‘Scary’ is slang for cool or cool. this meme the D66 leader waved goodbye to Kaag on the day she resigned as Minister of Foreign Affairs. While the account focuses on native speakers of the slang, it is mainly students and professionals who have embraced it as a gem in the meme landscape.
Enthusiasts and connoisseurs of Dutch politics will have noticed that this photo comes from the Afghanistan debate on 15 September. The ‘street warrior’, someone who follows urban lifestyle, on the other hand, will notice that the meme refers to the song scary loesoe from homegrown rapper JoeyAK. “This account is an excuse for me to keep up with current events,” says Dahmani. “News photos are often very bizarre and then I try to give them a human face.”
Language lesson for Tijmen and Floris
That everyday face of the news shows itself, for example, in a meme on which the FVD leader Thierry Baudet in the House of Representatives holds his hands in the air like claws, while the text floats above his head: “So I’ll grab two ayran (Turkish yogurt drink, nice with the döner) from that fridge.” The meme takes Baudet out of the plenary hall and places him in a kebab shop. The characters in the pictures on Hetiseenhefla range from King Willem Alexander to German Chancellor Angela Merkel or kick boxer Rico Verhoeven.
The news images in combination with slang are especially popular with people who have little to do with the culture from which those words come. Most texts are therefore abracadabra for most followers of this account. “I would rather address a more multicultural group to make them aware of what’s going on in the news,” says the rapper. But his unexpected audience has also motivated him to online street dictionary to put together. “I think it’s great that people called Tijmen and Floris use Moroccan words. Hefla is a language lesson for them and that is a nice side effect”, says Dahmani.
The bright but mischievous pre-university student is a perfect metaphor for this account. Hefla scrapes together the issues of the day and serves it out in a virtual kebab shop. Whoever is hungry, walks in.
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