About

pablo.gonzales.2007 (year varies) is a nickname used to describe stereotypical young Team Fortress 2 free-to-play players from Latin American countries who use [name].[surname].[year] nickname format. The nickname achieved meme status among Team Fortress 2 fans in 2017 and has since saw use in memes within the game's community.

Origin

On August 21st, 2017, Redditor^[1] ry_fluttershy made the earliest found post which used the nickname "pablo.gonzales.2005" to reference free-to-play Team Fortress 2 players from Latin American countries (shown below). It is unconfirmed whether a player actually used the nickname before the post, or it was spawned as a combination of popular Latin American first and second names to parody a young Latin American player using a [name].[surname].[year] nickname format.

On November 6th, 2017, Redditor^[2] Big_Yazza provided a potential explanation for popularity of such name format, with the post gaining over 270 upvotes

Because they tend to have their full name as their email (ie enrico.gonzales42@gmail.com) and so they use that name by default. Generally they grow out of it fairly quickly, but because a lot of the players we would associate with these names are 8-12 years old, they don't know enough about the internet to know that privacy is important.

Spread

Starting in September 2017, the nickname appeared in a number of comments in /r/tf2 subreddit,^[3][4] being used to reference young free-to-play Latin American players. The nickname became associated with the Ghasty Gibus cosmetic item that is popular among free-to-play players due to its availability.

On February 10th, 2018, Redditor^[5] gtggtfg made the earliest found image post in which the nickname appeared (shown below, top). The post received over 440 upvotes in six months.

By approximately mid-2018, the nickname became a popular ironic choice among Team Fortress 2 players,^[6] which promoted its further popularity (shown below, bottom).

Since 2018, the nickname appeared in a number of Team Fortress 2 memes and videos. For example, on April 29th, 2020, YouTube^[7] user Petaly posted an ironic Demotivational Poster video featuring a Pyro player nicknamed pablo.gonzales.2007 that received over 111,000 views in nine months (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References