Ukraine, the choreo battle rages on TikTok

SBear in mind what Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan mentioned: “The actual message is the medium. » What is supposed by that is that the message isn’t a easy content material that might be disseminated indiscriminately by one kind of media or one other, however quite the opposite its very nature is deeply influenced by ergonomics. of the medium by means of which it’s conveyed. This considerably generic concept, the concrete which means of which isn’t essentially straightforward to know, finds an edifying illustration within the encounter between the problems of pictures of the battle in Ukraine and the visible tradition of the TikTok media.

A cellular video-sharing utility launched in 2016 by the Chinese language firm ByteDance, TikTok has loved dazzling success by providing the potential for making and broadcasting free small viral clips of some seconds the place customers movie themselves, typically dancing. , to the music of their alternative. For youngsters, who significantly recognize it, this social community has made it attainable to remodel a roughly monotonous every day life right into a full of life musical comedy, a kind of La La La Land supply.

When the battle in Ukraine all of a sudden got here to shake the relative tranquility of the European continent, as a result of the fighters are most frequently younger, TikTok logically turned, together with different platforms, the sounding board for the combating. Troopers burst within the path of an invisible enemy, tankers maneuvering feverishly of their metallic shell, missiles streaking the sky of who is aware of which province. Since the message is the mediummany of those snapshots of the tiktokized battle have been accompanied by never-before-seen background music. that’s how rich sonof the group Creedence Clearwater Revival, accompanied the rocket hearth of a Ukrainian fighter in ambush, giving the scene a false air of the Vietnam Warfare.

Tragic and light-weight

Much more incongruous: beneath the hashtag #dancingsoldiers have appeared a number of movies the place you may admire the choreographies of troopers on the battlefield, in fatigues and in arms, the machine gun typically dangling ostensibly between the thighs, like a virile appendage reworked right into a metronome. Alex Hook of his nickname, Ukrainian commando with blue lagoon eyes, has thus develop into an actual viral celeb because of his dance steps, carried out from the Donbass. As at all times with social networks, it’s troublesome to know if this combating dad actually exists or if he’s a legend constructed from scratch.

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