“Berlin nightlife, but honest.” That’s the bio of the BerlinClubMemes Instagram account, and it’s the page’s relentless relatability that makes it so popular. Boasting regular traction from 303k followers, it has its finger on the pulse of the city’s nuances. You probably know the account. Its content ranges from calling out Berliners’ behaviours, like renting out a room in their WG for two days in July, to Venn diagrams connecting therapy, BDSM and Berlin summer under ‘cry if you need to’. It’s a memeification of mental breakdown, a celebration of arrested development and lots of good fun. But do you know the person behind it? Famously spotted on Subway Takes in a black ski mask, he’s the enigma that makes it happen. We talked to him about memes, trends and the thing at the centre of the Venn diagram of it all: Berlin clubs.
How did BerlinClubMemes start?
I’ve been into memes for a long time. I’ve been partying for a long time too. So I just combined these two topics. I would say my screen time is as much as my partying time – pretty much 12 hours a day on Instagram, 12 hours in the club.
Was there a point when things started to blow up?
It’s been growing for quite some time, but it really took off during the pandemic. People needed a little bit of club culture. That had to happen outside of clubs, unfortunately, and we all spent a lot of time on Instagram. I was doing a few news posts here and there, too, for people to stay informed about clubs reopening.
Is that an important part of what you do as well? For example, you posted recently about RAW-Gelände and the demo to protect those venues.
It’s important to keep people informed next to being entertained. I recently started a small news channel and tried to build it up a bit more, because, especially recently with all of the club closures, there’s a lot of insecurity in the scene.
What’s special about Berlin’s club culture?
People declare club culture dead constantly, but then it still pops up somewhere else and reinvents itself.
Everything is constantly reinventing itself. As much as people say that it all happened already in the 90s, there’s still something new. People declare club culture dead constantly, but then it still pops up somewhere else and reinvents itself. Even right now, there are a lot of very exciting new venues, while the general narrative is that everything is shutting down. There’s a lot of pessimism. There’s a lot of Berlin bashing. Just recently, there was an article again in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that Berlin is now, finally, really over.
Wow. It’s official?
Yeah, such a surprising article. Every half a year, people declare Berlin over, and then it just starts to reinvent itself in other ways. Because there’s also this funny narrative to always be searching for the next Berlin. But then it’s more: what is Berlin? Berlin in the 90s – I mean, I personally wasn’t there – but I don’t think that can be repeated, you know? It’s nostalgia. To repeat this would be kind of stupid.
We’d have to build a Wall again, just to knock it down.
I mean, if you’re going there, we’re moving towards a divided culture somehow, sadly.
Do you think there’s nostalgia for the pre-pandemic club scene, too?
There’s a difference. One big topic is, of course, Griessmühle. That was still here. But I see it in the people who comment on my posts, that there’s a lot of longing for this pre-pandemic time. It’s almost that people are glorifying it, even those who weren’t in Berlin yet. The pre-pandemic time is becoming our Berlin 90s and Griessmühle is becoming our Mutoid Waste Company. There’s also this interesting observation that there was a whole generation of people who didn’t quite get socialised by nightlife, people who were young during the pandemic, like 15 to 18. At the time we all pretty much start to go to clubs, they couldn’t, so I don’t think it feels that natural for them to go clubbing.
Do you think there’s a generational gap in how people in their early 20s are experiencing club culture?
I think they experience it a lot through that nostalgia; they weren’t part of shaping it. When you start going out at that age, you’re also shaping the places you go to. For them, the places were already shaped. It’s almost a historical thing, because in Berlin, you used to have a lot of time on your hands. You didn’t have to be successful. You didn’t have to do something.
You could just party until forever. We still have this romantic idea, which, of course, isn’t possible anymore because of how society has developed. People have jobs now, you know?
In the early 2000s or the 90s, you didn’t really need a job at all. So it’s also about the economy of partying. There are a lot of daytime parties now, which makes sense, because you can go party and then go to work the next day.
What do you like about meme culture?
Memes became their own art form, apart from writing, photography, music and everything. I think it’s super interesting that this format became its own thing, its own way of communication.
You use lots of different formats: classic memes, images, Venn diagrams. It’s super creative, adapting the form to the content.
And it’s constantly developing. There are a few classic memes which are funny due to their repetition. Putting a known picture into different contexts creates some kind of humour, but then it’s always interesting to experiment with new information, new pictures, new formats. You can really feel how these formats develop.
Do you know why you chose a certain format over another?
Sometimes there’s an image coming up that’s iconic – like recently, it’s the flag those people put on the Empire State Building – and then you already have the idea that it’s going to become viral. Or the other way around is if you have a topic first, then you choose the format after. It’s pretty much both ways: either you fill in an already iconic picture with another meaning, or you have a meaning and try to find a format to communicate it as easily as possible.
What can Berliners do to help the future of the club scene?
Just go partying – and go vote.
Stay up to date with BerlinClubMemes on IG @berlinclubmemes
