Shawarmachine / Yarbis

About

The Shawarmachine, also known as Shawarma Man or Shawarma Iron Man, and Yarbis refers to a meme about a variant Iron Man who serves chicken shawarma. In the original image, the robotic man is depicted with vertical doner kebab rotisseries in his chest and arm, "OPEN" written on his forehead, foil-wrapped pitas protruding from his back and holding chili and garlic sauce (red and white sauce) in either hand. The original image was created in 2019, coinciding with the release of Avengers: Endgame. Going into the 2020s, users cosplayed as Shawarma Iron Man and used the image as an exploitable by inserting it into pre-existing meme templates. In 2024, TikTok memes surfaced en masse that used the image of Shawarma Iron Man and enacted his imagined voice giving Jarvis Commands. However, the memes imagined that his Jarvis was called Yarbis. In turn, the meme became widely known as Yarbis on TikTok and elsewhere.

Origin

On January 7th, 2019, Facebook^[1] user BossLogic shared an image he named the "ShaWARMACHINE," writing, "ShaWARMACHINE will Wrap up #AvengersEndgame he is the only hope against #thanos 👀." The image depicted Iron Man, instead with a vertical doner kebab rotisserie and other items akin to shawarma. Over five years, the post amassed roughly 2,800 reactions and 4,000 shares (shown below).

Spread

Later on January 7th, 2019, the image was posted by Redditor^[2] TheExpendble to /r/dubai, gaining over 260 upvotes in five years.

Memes using the image surfaced soon after, like one post shared by the Facebook^[3] page Hemish Humor that added top and bottom Impact font captions about the Judaism of the future being a "Shawarma Bot" in every home, gaining over 220 reactions in five years (shown below).

Years later, on January 28th, 2024, TikToker^[4] @wahlidm showed himself in a fully automated Shawarmachine costume outside of his halal cart, receiving over 5.1 million plays and 747,800 likes in eight months (shown below).

On February 11th, TikToker^[5] @wahlidm posted a photo slideshow that included a photo of him in the costume and a Cure to Male Loneliness meme about the Shawarmachine (shown below, top and bottom), gaining over 159,000 plays and 22,400 likes in seven months.

Yarbis

On July 19th, 2024, TikToker^[5] @misericordia7779 posted a video that used the sound of a voice talking with a Latino accent through a robot filter, saying, "Yarbis!" Over two months, the video received roughly 3.3 million plays and 322,600 likes (shown below).

In the following weeks, TikTokers used the sound to post Shawarmachine memes, pretending that he was commanding "Yarbis." For instance, on August 29th, 2024, TikToker^[6] @mintysincensura was the first to make the connection in a photo slideshow that used the Yarbis sound and showed the Shawarmachine, gaining over 2 million plays and 380,900 likes in a month.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References