@moroccanmemeculture

Category: Society

  • Did we Niya our way to the top of world football?

    So, this World Cup we got dominated again by France, history repeating itself, but still those last two World Cups were unforgettable for us. A trajectory that no one would have bet on, not even me to be honest. The semi-final against France in Qatar 2022? The first African team ever to make it to this round. A 39-match unbeaten streak? Officially the longest unbeaten run in the history of international football. And last time I checked we are 7th in FIFA ranking. It all made me wonder, how did we get here?

    Between 1998 and 2018, we didn’t qualify for a single world cup, and even when we did in 2018, we didn’t make it out of the group stage. Our only AFCON title? 1976. This was the Moroccan team before the big switch. Walid Regragui. Selected only 3 months before the 2022 World Cup and as a cherry on top, he inherited a broken team. Ziyech and Mazraoui were refusing to play under the previous coach. In a few weeks, Regragui brought everyone home, and built a strong collective identity around a concept we didn’t know would take us this far; NIYA!

    Niya comes from the Arabic “niyyah”: the intention you set in your heart before you act. In Islam, actions are judged by their intentions, not their outcomes. In Darija, the word grew a second life. Call someone “niya” and you’re half-praising his sincerity, half-laughing at his innocence. The one who trusts too fast. The one who believes too easily. Then Qatar happened, and Regragui gave us three words: “ghir dirou niya”. He repeated it in every interview until the country started repeating it back.

    And just like that, it became the word that carried us to a World Cup semifinal. A first for an African team. Niya is exactly what Tiktok would later call manifestation. It wasn’t only about training and strategy. It was about believing. And Not only the team, the whole country believed. Brands took it over, I would open the fridge and find the whole national team before finding the thing I was looking for! RedOne made a song called “Dirou Niyya” built directly on Regragui’s famous phrase. It was playing everywhere. So everywhere that i almost enjoyed it. RedOne? Now FIFA’s entertainment director.

    Hakimi walking to the stands to kiss his mother after the Belgium win. Boufal dancing with his mother on the pitch after Portugal, probably the single most beloved image of the entire tournament. These weren’t PR moments, they were handing the win directly to the women who raised them. Tiktok edits, Memes, merch… it was coming from everywhere! And the most memorable viral moment, the msemna boy, our good luck charm. Each time he put a msemna on his head, we won! And when France stopped the dream, nobody was mourning, we were all celebrating!

    Thank you for believing in Moroccan talent, for building team spirit, and for showing that with discipline, hard work, and above all with the niya, we can achieve great things.

    Achraf Hakimi, farewell tribute to Walid Regragui, March 2026

    Fresh from winning the U20 World Cup in 2025, Ouahbi took over the senior team in March 2026. Believe. Work. Succeed. Those are the values he brought with him, building on what Regragui had established. Daring to dream about the World Cup. And believing in it. Hearing his technique on TED Talk, I realised that’s actually what a very good manifestor would exactly do.

    AFCON 2025. Arab Cup 2025. CHAN. U20 World Cup. U17 AFCON. It stops being a miracle and starts being a system. It took one of the greatest football teams to take us down. Maybe they were manifesting a little bit more. It’s Deschamps’s last World Cup, right after losing his mom who died during the tournament and he came back to the bench within the week. The team is playing harder than ever! 2030, at home. I am putting my NIYA on it!

  • how did chouf tv shape moroccan memes?

    While looking through my meme folder (and yes, it’s a huge one) I couldn’t help but notice how many of them have a common denominator: Chouf TV. And it made me think about how, for the past 13 years, Chouf TV has been the silent architect behind almost every viral moment we share.

    Founded in late 2012 by Driss Chahtane, Chouf TV started with the social media boom, filming Morocco at its roughest. When I remember their beginnings, it’s not a journalistic achievement that comes to mind it’s the “impossi” meme, the street interviews I shared and referenced even in everyday conversations.

    But to understand why it worked, i asked myself about what changed around it? A cultural shift was happening at the same time. With social media, we moved from a culture of privacy where consumed content was controlled, framed and distributed through TV or radio to the vast digital world.

    “Chouha culture” the culture of exposure, of public spectacle became a defining part of this shift. And Chouf TV was one of, if not the biggest actor behind it. Their subject is anyone and everyone : street corners, markets, family disputes. They once interviewed a man because he didn’t like his croissant. You get it. The ordinary became broadcastable. Suddenly, everyone was visible. And in the digital age, if you are visible, you are meme-able.

    Their editorial logic is simple: prioritize emotional intensity, confrontation, and raw reactions. As it turns out, these are the exact ingredients of memes. The media flow they keep pumping nurtures social media constantly. Chouf TV never really set out to be a meme factory, but by capturing Morocco in its rawest, most unfiltered form, they accidentally built the manufacture of our digital humor.

    Today, with over 10 million YouTube subscribers and 40 million across Facebook, they describe themselves as a media outlet. I call them a meme factory. And whether we criticize them or not, Chouf TV provided the most iconic material the Moroccan internet has ever had. They created the stage, and we simply couldn’t resist.