Camilín's 'pregnant core': the anatomy of a meme

On the road to baldness and the 'pregnant core'

Some memes are just a joke, and some memes are a diagnosis. The one circulating these days about Camilín —a figure credited with a vacant stare, advanced baldness and a supposed spiritual pregnancy— belongs to the second category. It all started with a before-and-after comparison of one Camilín, said to have been 'impregnated' by one Pazuzú, and it has ended up as a small treatise on contemporary masculinity. Baldness as a disease, lonchafinismo (extreme penny-pinching) as a life philosophy, and the gaze of a supposed being of light are the three pillars holding up the joke.

Baldness as a symptom, not an aesthetic

The first layer of the meme is capillary. Some claim that the early retreat of the frontal hairline is not just an aesthetic issue but a symptom of something deeper: nature saving resources when it detects the user is no longer going to reproduce. The joke, which at heart is a bar-stool evolutionary theory, has become the axis of the discussion. The 'pregnant core' would be, in this reading, the result of a process of physical and spiritual degradation that starts at the forehead and ends in the gaze.

It is not the first time a meme has used baldness as a metaphor. What is new here is the clinical tone: people talk of 'disease', 'symptom' and 'withdrawal'. It is funny because, deep down, everyone joining in knows they are describing an acquaintance, not a patient. But the mechanism works: the joke is more effective the more it resembles a diagnosis.

'Lonchafinismo' and the unheated house

The second layer is economic. At some point in the conversation a classic accusation appears: owning a Porsche and a BMW but not turning on the heating. Lonchafinismo —that tendency to tighten the belt in everyday life while showing off the car— is presented here as the real problem. The day the boiler truly gives up, someone says, he will sell the car and buy another. Meanwhile, 15 degrees in winter.

The joke has a real core: the priority of appearance over comfort. In a country where the car remains a status symbol, spending on bodywork rather than heating is a decision many recognise. The meme invents nothing: it just exaggerates a pattern that exists.

The gaze of the being of light

The third layer is the hardest to define. People speak of a vacant stare, of an 'ethereal being', of someone who seems to have walked out of a documentary about testosterone deficiency and too much flat-screen time. The comparison with Usain Bolt —'you run into him at night and you make Usain Bolt look like a tortoise'— is the most repeated one. The antiestéticar, here, is physical: the idea that the mere presence of the character is intimidating.

As a whole, the meme works because it mixes three contemporary antiestéticars: losing your hair, losing your money and losing your presence. The 'pregnant core' is the sum of all three. And like every meme that lasts, it is hard to tell whether it is mockery or a warning.

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What is left of Camilín once you strip away the meme? A name, a photo and a set of attributes others have hung on him. In the end, the question is not who Camilín is, but why we recognise ourselves so much in the joke.