Zhdun / Snorp

Confirmed 126,711

About

Zhdun is the Russian nickname given to a sculpture by Margriet van Breevoort that spread across Russian social media in photoshops of famous images before being dubbed Snorp by members of Tumblr. On Reddit, the character is often referred to as Wosh.^[8]

Origin

"Zhdun" is actually named 'Homunculus Loxodontus' and was created by Dutch sculptor Margriet van Breevoort.^[1] The sculpture is of a Elephant Seal like being with arms sitting on a bench with an open seat next to it. It currently stands at LUMC Hospital in Leiden, and is intended to capture the emotion of a hospital waiting room (shown below).

While it's unclear the exact date it was installed, Breevoort's Facebook page^[2] shows a picture of her daughter hugging the statue dated May 28th, 2016.

"Zhdun" (ЖДУН in Russian) is a fabricated noun version of the verb "zhdat", which means "to wait."

Spread

The sculpture was first posted to the Russian internet on January 21st, 2017. On Russian Reddit-like site Pikabu, user Leriapingui^[3] uploaded the image and commenters immediately began making jokes about it. The first successful post was uploaded to Pikabu the following day by MyNameIs,^[4] in a joke about PC users (shown below). The post gained over 7,600 upvotes.

After that, "Zhdun" began appearing in Russian photoshop memes frequently. Usually, "Zhdun" is photoshopped into famous works of art or various famous photographs. The popularity of the photoshops began garnering European media attention in early February. Rbth,^[5] NL Times,^[1] and GlobalVoices^[6] picked up the spread of Zhdun.

Snorp

On January 31st, 2017, Tumblr user hellyesbro^[7] reblogged a picture of Zhdun sitting in a political meeting with the caption "adjusts microphone/ Snorp" (shown below). The post gained over 35,000 notes and led to the character being spread around Tumblr by the name Snorp.