The Whole Region Is Overgrown, and Moscow Is Being Overrun by This Junk

What's in the frame

The image has two parts. On the left is a selfie of a woman in a light headscarf with blue lettering; she looks straight into the camera with a serious, slightly displeased expression, and a glass shop window is visible behind her. On the right is the shop front itself: a sign reading “Boho” above the entrance, and on either side of the door, in black planters, stand tall dry yellow stalks with umbel-shaped flower heads. Two red arrows point at them, and above them, on a green banner in large letters, is the word “Hogweed” (“Borshchevik”).

This is a screenshot from a video rather than a clean template: the label and arrows were added by the author of the video herself. For jokes, people usually take either the whole frame or only the left part with the serious face.

The story of the video and the phrase

The author of the video is Maria Popova, who runs the public movement “Antiborshchevik” and talks on social media about the fight against this plant. According to media reports, a video titled something like “Muscovites, what are you doing?..” came out in June 2021; one article gives 18 June as the date. In it she is outraged that dry hogweed stalks are used as decoration at the entrance to an establishment.

In the line that became a slogan, she says that the whole region is overgrown and Moscow is getting overgrown too, and here people even “admire” the plant and put it out for decoration. Sources differ on the details: in one retelling this is text from the video itself, in another it is her reply in the comments, which followers began to copy under other people's videos. So it is more accurate to say that the phrase grew up around this story than to attribute it strictly to one place.

According to the same reports, the video gathered several hundred thousand views, and the hogweed hashtag on TikTok collected tens of millions of views. The author's follower count grew noticeably in that time, so figures differ between sources; keep this in mind if you need exact numbers.

Why the phrase stuck

The formula works as a ready-made template of outrage. It has scale (“the whole region”, “Moscow”), the image of an advancing evil (“is overgrown”), the offensive word “junk”, and at the end a reproach aimed at those who supposedly admire it. Taken together it sounds like an alarm, although the subject is a weed.

The jokes are built on substitution: hogweed is replaced with any irritating thing, while the serious tone stays the same. The smaller the problem, the stronger the contrast with the solemn intonation.

Examples of captions

Example one: “The whole feed is overgrown, and my phone is being overrun by this junk, while they admire it and post it for atmosphere.” Here hogweed is replaced by ads, and the caption copies the structure of the original down to the last word, so it is recognized at once.

Example two, under a photo of an overflowing sink: “The whole kitchen is overgrown with dishes.” The joke rests on an everyday scale: a problem of two plates is described as a natural disaster.

Example three, on the left part of the frame: “The group chat has forty unread messages, and they're discussing the weather.” The author's serious face confirms that the speaker is genuinely shocked.

Example four, the other way round, on the right part: the arrows point at something ordinary, for example a potted cactus, and the banner reads “Hogweed”. The mismatch itself is funny: the arrow points at something harmless, but the tone is accusing.

How to use it and what to keep in mind

This meme is best suited to everyday outrage with exaggeration. Keep the template part, “the whole … is overgrown, and … is being overrun by this junk”, unchanged and change only the object of the complaint.

Sosnowsky's hogweed is a real problem in a number of regions, and the author of the video spoke about it in earnest. The meme mixes that seriousness with a joke, so captions about the weed itself are usually built on sympathy for the fight against it, not on mocking the person in the frame.