As social media continues to become a bigger part of students’ daily lives, satire and meme pages have started to become commonplace, especially at colleges. The Institute has seen its fair share of satire accounts over the years; however, one account has managed to capture the attention of Jackets across campus in unprecedented numbers: Onlywillage.
Started by Esa Khwaja, third-year CNSM or Mr. Willage, to his online following, @onlywillage is a satire account that has managed to amass a following of over 6,000 followers with a view count of 2.6 million per month.
Khwaja got his start in February of 2025 when he transferred into the Institute last spring. As a transfer student, he found it challenging to form a group of his own and connect with his fellow Jackets. However, after seeing a similar parody account, @gtbarstool, Khwaja was inspired to make an account of his own under the name “Willagebarstool” in hopes it could help him meet new people.
“I thought of the page as just being something to get people to laugh at and maybe something good would come with it,” Khwaja said.
While wanting to make friends was a large part of why Onlywillage was started, Khwaja also wanted to try and make the campus feel more alive, giving everyone something they could all laugh at while strengthening school spirit.
“Not only was it to make friends, but one thing I noticed with Tech in general was there was nothing really like this. There was a wave of meme pages during the COVID era, but there’s been a super black period where there was nothing going on; it makes us look like a dead campus… I wanted to make it look like yes, we’re college students, we’re not just all books… Tech students can have a sense of humor [too],” Khwaja said.
Original posts were focused mostly on memes about Willage and poking fun at North Avenue. Things picked up quickly for the account, with Khwaja gaining popularity so fast that in only two months after Willagebarstool’s creation, he was contacted by Navbarstool asking him to change the account’s name.
“It was like a two-week-long discussion on what I was going to change my name to… I went back and forth with so many Instagram names. Originally, it was The Wolf of West Village, and I’m like something has to have a ring to it,” Khwaja said.
Eventually, he would decide on the name Mr. Willage, with the tag Onlywillage heading the account at the suggestion of his roommate. With the change in name came a change in content, as the account shifted to more general memes about the campus as a whole and posts generally based on what’s going on around campus.
“Mostly, it’s a reflection of what’s going on at the time; my best stuff comes in the moment. For example, I made a joke about a Stingerette driving. I put a video of a white Ford van running from the police, and the reason I did that was 15 minutes earlier, a Stingerette almost ran me over in the middle of the night,” Khwaja said.
Onlywillage has also recently started branching out its content, with sports posts being made to complement the memes. Although Onlywillage is not affiliated with the Institute in any way, Khwaja collaborates with some of the sports accounts like @sixpackgt and @ramble1885 for those posts.
“I wasn’t very good with college sports until I came to Tech. … [I got] added to a group chat with a bunch of other sports accounts, … and we’ll talk about the sports and collaborate for a lot of the sports stuff,” Khwaja said.
While posts might seem simple to make, there is a lot of effort actually put into making each one. Khwaja uses a variety of tools to make posts, including software like Canva, Photoshop, CapCut and occasionally Adobe Premiere, and it can take hours making one post.
“It looks so simple, but it takes so long to get everything downloaded and arrange everything,” Khwaja said.
As of late, Khwaja has continued to work towards his goal of making the Institute more lively by organizing events like the performative male competition to large student turnouts. @onlywillage has played a big role in making the campus feel more alive and fun, and with the growing popularity, things are only going to go up from here.