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Horror smiled away
Those who repress the brutality and seriousness of war and violence in order to be able to endure it may achieve short-term relief, but in the long term they will be prepared to accept increasingly extreme measures.
Recognizing reality is painful, but it also offers the possibility of changing it.
Recognizing reality is painful, but it also offers the possibility of changing it.
Horror smiled away
The conflict between Israel and Iran is degenerating into a spectacle on the internet, with gallows humor serving as a last resort for compensation.
Normally, people react to war with fear, grief, and anger. But as tensions escalate in the Middle East, social media is also showing signs of enthusiasm and euphoric schadenfreude. Some people do not seem to see war for what it is: a human catastrophe and the abandonment of all values previously espoused. What at first appears to be pure cynicism may be rooted in the fact that the situation — and in some cases one's own complicity in it — is so depressing and dangerous that the feelings that would actually be appropriate seem almost unbearable.
by Madita Hampe
[This article posted on 7/11/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/weggelacheltes-entsetzen.]
A cloud of smoke rises above the desolate landscape. From this distance, it is impossible to tell from the blurry camera footage whether one or more houses have exploded—only the color of the smoke cloud is visible: blue. In the background, several men can be heard laughing and cheering. One of them utters the words that make them happy: “It's a boy.” (1)
The men are apparently members of the Israeli military, and the target of the attack is a building in the Gaza Strip. The caption under the video, which was published in early May by the Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera, reads:
“Israeli soldiers filmed themselves blowing up a building in Gaza while laughing at the blue smoke, reminiscent of a gender reveal.”
Gender reveals are an invention of the social media world. Couples—especially influencer couples—do not ask the gynecologist who examines them to tell them the sex of their child directly, but instead ask him to write it down on a piece of paper, which the couple then gives to a trusted person. This person then organizes a color-coded surprise that the parents-to-be can experience together and usually post online.
There is often a competition online to see who can come up with the most original idea. Pink or blue cakes are cut, small smoke bombs are set off, or the parents pop a large balloon filled with confetti. Normally, no one gets hurt. Normally, houses don't explode either.
Whether the soldiers actually filled the bomb with blue smoke to surprise the father-to-be with the gender of his child or whether they are just laughing because the color reminds them of such an announcement cannot be determined with certainty from the video.
Either way, the laughter and obvious joy with which they react to the destruction of their target is frightening. It is as if a humorous indifference—typical of social media, which tries to turn everything into a meme—has reached the reality of war.
Al Jazeera is not an impartial broadcaster, but clearly pro-Arab. Therefore, publications there — just like those in the Israeli media — should be treated with caution, especially when they are highly emotional.
However, international media outlets such as the Times of India have since picked up on the video. In the West, on the other hand, it has received no attention (2)(3), with the exception of an article in the Swiss tabloid Blick.
Arab satisfaction
Six weeks later and several hundred kilometers away, a saxophonist stands on a roof in Lebanon and plays his instrument passionately as bright points of light flash across the horizon. Around him are smartly dressed people who appear to be celebrating a rooftop party, pointing their smartphones toward the sky to capture the spectacle.
The mood seems exuberant and curious. There is no trace of fear or despair in the video, which is supposed to show how the revelers reacted to the rockets Iran fired toward Israel that night (4).
Videos like this circulated widely online from mid-June onwards. It is highly unlikely that they reflect the actual emotional reality of many people—especially those who were in the bomb-hit areas on both sides. Nevertheless, it is striking how often such surreal indifference—or, in extreme cases, enthusiasm—for the war is displayed online.
There are other videos from Lebanon showing people cheering Iran's rocket barrage, for example to “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme (A Man After Midnight)” by Abba (5) or “Wonderful Life” (6) by Black. There are also recordings from Yemen, where the attacks are apparently being watched in public (7).
On the Arab side, this media reality is characterized above all by a certain euphoric satisfaction that Israel is finally getting “its comeuppance.” Representatives of the Israeli perspective are likely to see this as the ultimate proof of their opponents' immorality, while the latter would counter that anyone who has not suffered from Israel's colonial foreign policy should not judge these reactions.
The very fact that these arguments clash shows how far the spiral of violence and revenge has already escalated.
Anyone who allows even the slightest room for the principle of revenge in this conflict has already given up on ever ending it, because in the Middle East there will always be someone to avenge.
Apart from the fact that rejoicing over the rockets is inappropriate because they primarily hit innocent people, it is also irrational. Anyone living in Lebanon must be haunted by the fear of a conflagration, perhaps so much so that ecstatic repression is their only coping strategy.
However, the indifference portrayed on the internet does not necessarily mean that the people shown in the videos are actually happy about the war or indifferent to it. In psychology, there is a phenomenon called parathyme. The term refers to a disorder of affectivity in which people express feelings that appear completely contrary to the situation they are in. An example of this is when someone suddenly starts laughing or grinning uncontrollably at the funeral of a loved one, even though they are confronted with something unpleasant. This is often because the feelings that would actually be appropriate for the situation are too overwhelming or threatening to allow them to surface directly.
Israeli glorification
However, this strange behavior is not limited to the Arab world. In addition to the aforementioned gender reveal video, which still refers to the war in the Gaza Strip, footage from Israel after the escalation with Iran also shows a bizarre lightheartedness in dealing with military violence. For example, a video is circulating showing a musical trio singing while playing the cello and guitar:
“We bombed Iran, we bombed Tehran, we blocked their plan, cause if you're messin with the Jews you're always gonna lose, it's gods plan, god rules the land, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.” (8)
The musical template for this performance is the song “Bomb Iran” by Vince Vance & The Valiants from 1980. The melody and chorus were taken from this song, but the rest of the lyrics and the basic message were changed. The original “Bomb Iran” was a parody caricaturing American interventionism. And even though the musicians seem to take what they are doing quite seriously, one cannot rule out that this is also satire.
As is so often the case, Donald Trump illustrates how difficult it is to distinguish between fun and seriousness. After the US attack on Iran, he shared the original satirical song on the short message service Truth Social. Whether he didn't listen to it properly beforehand and didn't understand the meaning of the song, or whether he is displaying a particularly sublime form of double self-irony, cannot be determined with certainty.
What remains, however, is the impression that the whole thing is a game in which people post songs for or against one side or the other, implementing funny video ideas — even in situations that have rarely been so existential.
A partially relaxed mood can also be observed in Tel Aviv a few hours after the first attacks.
An influencer who documents his travels on Instagram rides a skateboard along a beach bathed in sunset and describes it radiantly:
"This is why Tel Aviv in Israel is my favorite place in the whole world: Just look, last night Iran fired ballistic missiles at civilians here, and today we're on the beach playing volleyball, enjoying life. It's so beautiful to see. I'm not afraid when I'm here in Israel right now." (9)
It goes without saying that this does not even begin to reflect reality. At the latest when the rockets actually hit, people flee to bunkers or recover the bodies of their family members, this lightheartedness is likely to disappear.
Gallows humor and denial
In the age of AI, every single one of these videos should be viewed with a degree of skepticism. However, in the mass in which they are currently flooding social media, they reveal a trend toward disinhibition when it comes to armed conflict. These events are no longer treated for what they are: brutal, traumatic events that claim countless victims and should be prevented at all costs.
Another viral video shows a blazing inferno, its flames shooting meters high into the night in the shape of a mushroom cloud (10). People who appear tiny in the face of the fountain of fire run for their lives in the opposite direction. Above the scene, the words “My First World War, Kinda Nervous” are emblazoned.
And as if that weren't enough, the video is set to the cheerful intro of the Disney series “Jessie.”
And as if that weren't enough, the video is set to the cheerful intro of the Disney series “Jessie.” In the 2010s, this series aired in Germany on Super RTL and revolves around a young woman who starts babysitting the four spoiled children of a New York family and is hopelessly overwhelmed. The words of the intro song also fit the war situation shown in a bizarrely sarcastic way:
“My whole world is changin', turnin' around
They got me goin' crazy, yeah, they're shakin' the ground.”
At first glance, videos like this seem like pure cynicism — and perhaps they are: simply a symptom of societies that are so immersed in the media that they eventually lose sight of the fact that real life — unlike social media — is not a game. But it could also be a sign that the situation is so serious and, especially in the Gaza Strip, so brutal that people around the world have hardly any adequate strategies for processing it, nor any narratives with which to explain what is happening in a logical way.
Most people alive today only know the term “world war” from history books. This means that, on the one hand, they have absorbed its threat in an abstract way — and yet cannot really grasp it. In the current global political situation, there is something existential in the air — something that everyone can feel. And yet not everyone is able to respond appropriately.
As understandable as this parathymic reaction may be, it does not contribute to bringing the conflict any closer to a solution. Those who repress the brutality and seriousness of war and violence in order to be able to endure it may achieve short-term relief, but in the long term they will be prepared to accept increasingly extreme measures.
Recognizing reality is painful, but it also offers the possibility of changing it.
Sources and notes:
(1) https://www.youtube.com/sorts/YoP-LsdAbbI
(2) https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/watch-israeli-soldiers-viral-gender-reveal-video-shouts-its-a-boy-as-blue-smoke-erupts/articleshow/120915801.cms
(3) https://www.blick.ch/ausland/im-gaza-streifen-israelische-soldaten-sprengen-haus-fuer-gender-reveal-party-id20841508.html
(4) https://www.tiktok.com/@dailymail/video/7516128627415649578
(5) https://www.instagram.com/p/DK8gyL9SA6Q/
(6) https://www.instagram.com/p/DK6YF4OsvmI/
(7) https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=yemen+public+viewing+missiles#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:1dbfbfb5,vid:ndUOSuZtANU,st:0
(8) https://www.instagram.com/p/DLA1RJtuG2p/
(9) https://www.instagram.com/p/DK-YCZbOUf7/
(10) https://www.instagram.com/p/DK86gkPu1d8/
Madita Hampe, born in 2002, is an editor at Manova. She lives in Berlin and has been working as a journalist since she was 16. She is particularly interested in the nuances of social dynamics beyond dogmatism, dogmatism, and the comfort zone of one's own opinion. At Manova, she heads the youth editorial team and writes for the column “Junge Federn” (Young Feathers).
The conflict between Israel and Iran is degenerating into a spectacle on the internet, with gallows humor serving as a last resort for compensation.
Normally, people react to war with fear, grief, and anger. But as tensions escalate in the Middle East, social media is also showing signs of enthusiasm and euphoric schadenfreude. Some people do not seem to see war for what it is: a human catastrophe and the abandonment of all values previously espoused. What at first appears to be pure cynicism may be rooted in the fact that the situation — and in some cases one's own complicity in it — is so depressing and dangerous that the feelings that would actually be appropriate seem almost unbearable.
by Madita Hampe
[This article posted on 7/11/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/weggelacheltes-entsetzen.]
A cloud of smoke rises above the desolate landscape. From this distance, it is impossible to tell from the blurry camera footage whether one or more houses have exploded—only the color of the smoke cloud is visible: blue. In the background, several men can be heard laughing and cheering. One of them utters the words that make them happy: “It's a boy.” (1)
The men are apparently members of the Israeli military, and the target of the attack is a building in the Gaza Strip. The caption under the video, which was published in early May by the Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera, reads:
“Israeli soldiers filmed themselves blowing up a building in Gaza while laughing at the blue smoke, reminiscent of a gender reveal.”
Gender reveals are an invention of the social media world. Couples—especially influencer couples—do not ask the gynecologist who examines them to tell them the sex of their child directly, but instead ask him to write it down on a piece of paper, which the couple then gives to a trusted person. This person then organizes a color-coded surprise that the parents-to-be can experience together and usually post online.
There is often a competition online to see who can come up with the most original idea. Pink or blue cakes are cut, small smoke bombs are set off, or the parents pop a large balloon filled with confetti. Normally, no one gets hurt. Normally, houses don't explode either.
Whether the soldiers actually filled the bomb with blue smoke to surprise the father-to-be with the gender of his child or whether they are just laughing because the color reminds them of such an announcement cannot be determined with certainty from the video.
Either way, the laughter and obvious joy with which they react to the destruction of their target is frightening. It is as if a humorous indifference—typical of social media, which tries to turn everything into a meme—has reached the reality of war.
Al Jazeera is not an impartial broadcaster, but clearly pro-Arab. Therefore, publications there — just like those in the Israeli media — should be treated with caution, especially when they are highly emotional.
However, international media outlets such as the Times of India have since picked up on the video. In the West, on the other hand, it has received no attention (2)(3), with the exception of an article in the Swiss tabloid Blick.
Arab satisfaction
Six weeks later and several hundred kilometers away, a saxophonist stands on a roof in Lebanon and plays his instrument passionately as bright points of light flash across the horizon. Around him are smartly dressed people who appear to be celebrating a rooftop party, pointing their smartphones toward the sky to capture the spectacle.
The mood seems exuberant and curious. There is no trace of fear or despair in the video, which is supposed to show how the revelers reacted to the rockets Iran fired toward Israel that night (4).
Videos like this circulated widely online from mid-June onwards. It is highly unlikely that they reflect the actual emotional reality of many people—especially those who were in the bomb-hit areas on both sides. Nevertheless, it is striking how often such surreal indifference—or, in extreme cases, enthusiasm—for the war is displayed online.
There are other videos from Lebanon showing people cheering Iran's rocket barrage, for example to “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme (A Man After Midnight)” by Abba (5) or “Wonderful Life” (6) by Black. There are also recordings from Yemen, where the attacks are apparently being watched in public (7).
On the Arab side, this media reality is characterized above all by a certain euphoric satisfaction that Israel is finally getting “its comeuppance.” Representatives of the Israeli perspective are likely to see this as the ultimate proof of their opponents' immorality, while the latter would counter that anyone who has not suffered from Israel's colonial foreign policy should not judge these reactions.
The very fact that these arguments clash shows how far the spiral of violence and revenge has already escalated.
Anyone who allows even the slightest room for the principle of revenge in this conflict has already given up on ever ending it, because in the Middle East there will always be someone to avenge.
Apart from the fact that rejoicing over the rockets is inappropriate because they primarily hit innocent people, it is also irrational. Anyone living in Lebanon must be haunted by the fear of a conflagration, perhaps so much so that ecstatic repression is their only coping strategy.
However, the indifference portrayed on the internet does not necessarily mean that the people shown in the videos are actually happy about the war or indifferent to it. In psychology, there is a phenomenon called parathyme. The term refers to a disorder of affectivity in which people express feelings that appear completely contrary to the situation they are in. An example of this is when someone suddenly starts laughing or grinning uncontrollably at the funeral of a loved one, even though they are confronted with something unpleasant. This is often because the feelings that would actually be appropriate for the situation are too overwhelming or threatening to allow them to surface directly.
Israeli glorification
However, this strange behavior is not limited to the Arab world. In addition to the aforementioned gender reveal video, which still refers to the war in the Gaza Strip, footage from Israel after the escalation with Iran also shows a bizarre lightheartedness in dealing with military violence. For example, a video is circulating showing a musical trio singing while playing the cello and guitar:
“We bombed Iran, we bombed Tehran, we blocked their plan, cause if you're messin with the Jews you're always gonna lose, it's gods plan, god rules the land, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.” (8)
The musical template for this performance is the song “Bomb Iran” by Vince Vance & The Valiants from 1980. The melody and chorus were taken from this song, but the rest of the lyrics and the basic message were changed. The original “Bomb Iran” was a parody caricaturing American interventionism. And even though the musicians seem to take what they are doing quite seriously, one cannot rule out that this is also satire.
As is so often the case, Donald Trump illustrates how difficult it is to distinguish between fun and seriousness. After the US attack on Iran, he shared the original satirical song on the short message service Truth Social. Whether he didn't listen to it properly beforehand and didn't understand the meaning of the song, or whether he is displaying a particularly sublime form of double self-irony, cannot be determined with certainty.
What remains, however, is the impression that the whole thing is a game in which people post songs for or against one side or the other, implementing funny video ideas — even in situations that have rarely been so existential.
A partially relaxed mood can also be observed in Tel Aviv a few hours after the first attacks.
An influencer who documents his travels on Instagram rides a skateboard along a beach bathed in sunset and describes it radiantly:
"This is why Tel Aviv in Israel is my favorite place in the whole world: Just look, last night Iran fired ballistic missiles at civilians here, and today we're on the beach playing volleyball, enjoying life. It's so beautiful to see. I'm not afraid when I'm here in Israel right now." (9)
It goes without saying that this does not even begin to reflect reality. At the latest when the rockets actually hit, people flee to bunkers or recover the bodies of their family members, this lightheartedness is likely to disappear.
Gallows humor and denial
In the age of AI, every single one of these videos should be viewed with a degree of skepticism. However, in the mass in which they are currently flooding social media, they reveal a trend toward disinhibition when it comes to armed conflict. These events are no longer treated for what they are: brutal, traumatic events that claim countless victims and should be prevented at all costs.
Another viral video shows a blazing inferno, its flames shooting meters high into the night in the shape of a mushroom cloud (10). People who appear tiny in the face of the fountain of fire run for their lives in the opposite direction. Above the scene, the words “My First World War, Kinda Nervous” are emblazoned.
And as if that weren't enough, the video is set to the cheerful intro of the Disney series “Jessie.”
And as if that weren't enough, the video is set to the cheerful intro of the Disney series “Jessie.” In the 2010s, this series aired in Germany on Super RTL and revolves around a young woman who starts babysitting the four spoiled children of a New York family and is hopelessly overwhelmed. The words of the intro song also fit the war situation shown in a bizarrely sarcastic way:
“My whole world is changin', turnin' around
They got me goin' crazy, yeah, they're shakin' the ground.”
At first glance, videos like this seem like pure cynicism — and perhaps they are: simply a symptom of societies that are so immersed in the media that they eventually lose sight of the fact that real life — unlike social media — is not a game. But it could also be a sign that the situation is so serious and, especially in the Gaza Strip, so brutal that people around the world have hardly any adequate strategies for processing it, nor any narratives with which to explain what is happening in a logical way.
Most people alive today only know the term “world war” from history books. This means that, on the one hand, they have absorbed its threat in an abstract way — and yet cannot really grasp it. In the current global political situation, there is something existential in the air — something that everyone can feel. And yet not everyone is able to respond appropriately.
As understandable as this parathymic reaction may be, it does not contribute to bringing the conflict any closer to a solution. Those who repress the brutality and seriousness of war and violence in order to be able to endure it may achieve short-term relief, but in the long term they will be prepared to accept increasingly extreme measures.
Recognizing reality is painful, but it also offers the possibility of changing it.
Sources and notes:
(1) https://www.youtube.com/sorts/YoP-LsdAbbI
(2) https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/watch-israeli-soldiers-viral-gender-reveal-video-shouts-its-a-boy-as-blue-smoke-erupts/articleshow/120915801.cms
(3) https://www.blick.ch/ausland/im-gaza-streifen-israelische-soldaten-sprengen-haus-fuer-gender-reveal-party-id20841508.html
(4) https://www.tiktok.com/@dailymail/video/7516128627415649578
(5) https://www.instagram.com/p/DK8gyL9SA6Q/
(6) https://www.instagram.com/p/DK6YF4OsvmI/
(7) https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=yemen+public+viewing+missiles#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:1dbfbfb5,vid:ndUOSuZtANU,st:0
(8) https://www.instagram.com/p/DLA1RJtuG2p/
(9) https://www.instagram.com/p/DK-YCZbOUf7/
(10) https://www.instagram.com/p/DK86gkPu1d8/
Madita Hampe, born in 2002, is an editor at Manova. She lives in Berlin and has been working as a journalist since she was 16. She is particularly interested in the nuances of social dynamics beyond dogmatism, dogmatism, and the comfort zone of one's own opinion. At Manova, she heads the youth editorial team and writes for the column “Junge Federn” (Young Feathers).
For more information:
http://www.freetranslations.foundation
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