Cleaning Guy / LikefamEco 🍆
About
Cleaning Guy (also known as LikefamEco) is a Russian eco-activist and content creator who became a viral meme after posting photos of himself collecting garbage in nature. While his project originally aimed to inspire people to clean the environment, one particular photo gained unexpected popularity when viewers noticed what looked like an unusually large bulge in his pants. This combination of wholesome activism and NSFW humor turned him into a recurring subject of edits and jokes on 9GAG and other platforms.
Origin
In 2021, TikTok creator @likefameco (Пётр from Khimki, Russia) launched the #likefameco project after previously gaining almost one million followers on the platform. Wanting to make his content both entertaining and socially useful, he began livestreaming himself cleaning up trash in nature. His eco-streams reached over 100,000 viewers on TikTok before the project was paused for winter.
After TikTok was restricted in Russia, he lost his audience of 950,000 followers but continued posting clean-up results on Western platforms such as 9GAG. At first, his posts received little attention.
That changed in April 2022, when he uploaded a photo of himself standing next to large bags of garbage. Due to the way his pants folded, users believed he had an enormous bulge. The post can still be found here.
Spread
The image quickly went viral on 9GAG, gaining thousands of upvotes and millions of views. Users began circling and highlighting the bulge in edits, making jokes and turning “Cleaning Guy” into a community running gag.
As a result, his account began reaching 1–4 million viewers per post, and he became the first Russian user to be officially verified on 9GAG (profile).
While some comments targeted him with political hostility due to his nationality, the majority of the community supported his activism. Many users from around the world shared their own photos of garbage clean-ups in the comments, often jokingly tagging them as “inspired by Cleaning Guy.”
Impact
The meme boosted the visibility of the LikefamEco project and helped transform a small eco-initiative into a global online movement. Supporters from the Netherlands, Czech Republic, and other countries began sending him photos of their own clean-ups, often writing encouraging comments such as:
“You are an Eco-Warrior. Thanks for defending the planet.”
“15kg clean-up, Karma +1.”
Although it started as an optical illusion joke, the Cleaning Guy meme became a rare example where internet humor and sexual innuendo amplified a positive social cause.