While previous phenomena such as the ‘Squatting Slav’ meme have largely focused on masculinity, this paper examines how Eastern Europe - and Eastern European femininity in particular - is represented on the Instagram meme page Eastern Bloc Girl (122,000 followers as of October 2025), run by a Serbian woman in her twenties. My analysis focuses on two key frameworks through which Eastern Europe is depicted: first, as an irrational or nonsensical space marked by contrasts; and second, through nostalgia expressed in imagery of brutalist architecture and rural life. I use the term ‘(post-)post-communist nostalgia’ to describe how a generation with little or no lived memory of communism engages with this type of content.

Building on Ozdamar and Taştan’s (2023) argument that the aestheticisation and fetishisation of the former Eastern Bloc constitute a new form of cultural capital among its youth, I suggest that Eastern Bloc Girl constructs a distinct, self-aware digital identity that reclaims ‘Eastness’ as a shared generational marker. The account’s use of English as its primary language and its references to Western cultural artefacts and global Anglophone meme trends indicate an intended transnational audience. By presenting distorted or localised Eastern European versions of global memes, the page, at least temporarily, subverts Euro-Orientalist discourses that frame the region as deviant, imitative, and culturally handicapped (Adamovsky 2006).

Through the ironic embrace of stereotypes and deliberate self-Euro-Orientalisation Eastern Bloc Girl exemplifies a broader shift in Eastern European self-representation in digital culture since the 2010s. Whereas earlier expressions often emphasised ‘Europeanness,’ contemporary meme practices reappropriate ‘Eastness’ as a mode of self-definition for Gen Z creators and audiences across the region.