BO2 Summer: War Content, Black Aesthetics, and Gen Z’s Algorithmic Dread

em ingram

A fleet of over 125 aircraft reportedly dropped 75 precision bombs on Iran’s Fordow and Natanz nuclear sites, while Tomahawk missiles struck Isfahan. The attack, dubbed “Operation Midnight Hammer,” was authorized by Donald Trump on June 22 — an act carried out on behalf of Israel’s surmounting regional attacks. The world watched, but many of us didn’t respond as might be expected. Instead of horror, we scrolled, laughed, and meme’d. WWIII anime teasers; ‘What I eat in the military’ videos showing soldiers being served steak and lobster; nuclear simulation maps; and jump-style war-time TikTok edits. Instead of taking it seriously, we compare it to video games: COD edits to cope with fear of a draft, the automatic search bar over these posts reads ‘WWIII Outfit Ideas,’ and ‘GRWM for WWIII. Say it's an update to BO2 and call it BO2 summer. American Gen Z’s collective response is basically IDGAF, and I’ve got other plans. We’re a generation that genuinely treats geopolitical catastrophe like a video game.

This blasé response isn’t apathy; it’s the product of a lifetime raised on irony, catastrophe, and algorithmic feedback loops. Gen Z’s humor, detachment, and endless meme circulation both reflect and reinforce our collective numbness. Through this vast pool of content, it's critical to acknowledge how much of this is produced by far-right extremists— particularly Incels, Groypers, and those who are Blackpilled. Equally important is the content that exists at the front door to this pipeline — that draws young audiences deeper into Islamophobic Arabfunny content and content that often co-opts Black music, culture, vernacular, and aesthetics in pursuit of a racist and jingoistic agenda. 

In this essay, I argue that Gen Z’s algorithmic coping, ironic war humor, and the appropriation of Black cultural production converge to create a digital ecosystem where fear, critique, and entertainment blur. Understanding these patterns isn’t just cultural commentary; it’s a call to sharpen our understanding of modern youth politics, reclaim content, and name the violence we consume. 

To answer from the perspective of a Gen Z American, our blasé attitude is basically innate at this point. Born into the post-9/11 techno feudal surveillance hellscape, the entire generation has been raised on irony and imperial decay. All American Gen Z knows is be bisexual, eat hot chips, and lie living through unrelenting, unsuccessful geopolitical conflict. Likely stemming from a place of detachment and feelings of helplessness, this collective nihilism creates a negative feedback loop that constantly reinforces itself — through the repetition of hopeless memes, the dopamine hits of shallow engagement, and the emotional burnout that comes from endlessly consuming catastrophe with no outlet for response. We make jokes about our own doom, scroll past crisis after crisis, and call it coping — but often, it's closer to surrender. The patheticism isn't just aesthetic; it's structural, algorithmic, and deeply numbing.

Not all nihilistic content is created equal. While many posts share a sense of despair or detachment, it’s crucial to recognize the signs of blackpilled, alt-right content — the material designed to radicalize, cultivate resentment, and normalize racism, Islamophobia, or misogyny. These posts often operate in shades of gray rather than clear-cut partisan terms, blending doomerism, conspiratorial thinking, and cultural grievance — wrapping extremist ideas in humor, memes, and references that feel “just for fun,” making it hard to distinguish irony from indoctrination. That is importantly different from the jingoistic, pro-U.S. military edits that dominate other corners of the internet: they are explicit in their stance and function as part of the well-oiled machinery of American imperial propaganda and GOP conservatism. The latter lacks nuance but is clear in purpose; the former is layered, ironic, and manipulative, embedding radical politics in the guise of nihilistic humor. Being able to distinguish between these types of content is essential for understanding both the ecosystem of war-time media and how Gen Z engages with it.

On the flip side, leftist meme culture often layers irony and nuance in ways that resemble in-group signaling, but with very different intent. While these posts can be clever and culturally specific, their layered messaging sometimes blurs the critique, making it harder to circulate or understand. Many pro-Iran edits, for example, should not be equated with reactionary pro-U.S. content. Even when simplified or nationalistic, these edits can highlight legitimate critiques of Western intervention and underscore Iran’s historical position as a target of U.S. foreign policy. These posts often aim to illuminate power structures rather than radicalize or recruit, which sets them apart from blackpilled or alt-right content. Other posts attempt to draw clear historical throughlines, connecting past campaigns to present ones, and reminding Western audiences of the war-on-terror narrative tactics American politicians deploy when talking about Iran’s intentions or capabilities.

In my opinion, the most successful and funny content in the days following the strike have been the jokes about fragging in response to a fear of draft. While I still think it is dramatic to act like the draft has already been reinstated, I appreciate the younger generation rediscovering a genuine form of tactical imperial resistance. The big concern, however, is when this is done in the name of Blackpilled societal collapse. 

All in all, it is worth looking at how these edits are packaged — what sounds, aesthetics, and cultural shorthands they rely on to land their emotional punch. Even the funniest or most ironic content depends on a carefully curated sensory and cultural mix to resonate: the timing of a cut, the familiarity of a sound, the shared understanding of an in-group reference. One pattern is impossible to ignore: the pervasive use of Black cultural production across the board. especially popular rap and hip-hop tracks, as backing audio. For example, Artist FUBU Banksa’s Iran diss track “Fuck Iran (Iran Diss Track)” has regained popularity, appearing across ironic edits, aestheticized “war-core” content, and outright pro-military videos.

Black culture, hip-hop, and AAVE continue to be the foundation of digital meme culture — and that same culture is now being co-opted in ways that serve state narratives, military glamorization, and exploitative tropes.

Blackness is hyper-visible and endlessly consumable online. It drives the aesthetics, the sounds, the humor, the vernacular — not just of pop culture broadly, but of meme culture specifically. From TikTok dance trends to reaction images to the audio that underscores most viral content, Black cultural production is omnipresent. But that visibility doesn’t equate to power or protection. In fact, it often renders Blackness more exploitable — as spectacle, as style, as raw material. As TikTok user @Juju.therapper put it in a recent video, brainrot content is essentially digital minstrelsy. 

Recently, I’ve been encountering an influx of content that directly targets or references young Black men being enlisted — videos that joke about being drafted, “send me to Iran with [xyz] and I’ll handle it” trend — substituting in items like Don Julio, Hellcats, or switches as the imagined tools of war, or references to “patriotic YNs” with a kind of smirking pride. Such posts often blur satire and sincerity, but racial politics remain unsettling. All seemingly rely on a familiar archetype: the hyper-masculine, unbothered Black man turned cultural soldier — ready to “solve” geopolitical conflict through swag and slang. The jokes may be meant to resist or respond — but who is laughing, and who is being laughed at?

Even the alt-right and militaristic content creators who traffic in racist ideologies don’t hesitate to appropriate Black culture. You’ll see Chief Keef as a war-time savior and his music used in jingoistic war edits — often layered over footage of airstrikes, soldiers saluting, or young men posing with guns and flags. These edits flatten Black expression into aggression, and aggression into aesthetic. The music becomes a moodboard for violence, nationalism, and masculinity — stripped of its context, authorship, or critique. It’s a perverse kind of cultural laundering: Black soundscapes used to hype up a white imperial project.

This is especially chilling given how the U.S. military has historically targeted Black men for recruitment — and continues to. From economic coercion in underserved communities, to high school ROTC programs, to the marketing of military service as a path to masculinity, pride, or survival, Black youth are funneled toward enlistment through structural and symbolic means. The online ecosystem reflects this too — I’ve seen countless TikToks and memes joking about young Black men being “the first to get drafted,” or “ready to tote for the country.” Some are satire. Some are not. But all operate within a climate where the spectacle of Black masculinity is used to market war — either as something to laugh at, or something to aspire to.

This is not a new phenomenon — it echoes decades of state strategy, from the Vietnam draft to post-9/11 recruitment surges. What’s different now is that this messaging has become more decentralized and viral. It's not just coming from official military ads — it’s embedded in meme culture, passed around in bite-sized, ironic formats that make critique slippery. The line between commentary and complicity is increasingly hard to locate.

If art and media are meant to have teeth, ours are grinding themselves down. In this moment of global escalation, algorithmic warfare, and ironic nihilism, the content we make and share is never neutral. It either chews through the narratives we’re fed — or it softens and digests them for us.

Much of what we’re seeing right now — from WWIII outfit jokes to TikToks about being drafted with Don Julio and switches — is not without feeling, but it is without direction. It reflects genuine fear, detachment, and fatigue. But it rarely dares to bite back. Instead, it loops endlessly, caught in a feedback cycle of performance and passivity — broadcasting how doomed we are without naming who’s doing the dooming.

It’s important to remember that not all reactionary content is created equal. The alt-right and blackpilled ecosystem thrives on subtlety, irony, and cultural co-option, deliberately blurring humor and indoctrination. This is fundamentally different from mainstream conservative or jingoistic pro-U.S. content, which is explicit, straightforward, and overt in its messaging. Understanding this distinction is critical if we hope to respond strategically: we cannot evaluate content solely through a two-party lens, because ideological manipulation often operates outside neat partisan binaries.

This isn’t a call for purity or propaganda. It’s a call for clarity. A call to name violence when we see it, to break the flattening tone of the feed, and to make content that does more than entertain our resignation. The internet is a battlefield — not just of information, but of affect, humor, history, and possibility. We don’t need to abandon irony, memes, or chaos, but we do need to become more discerning, more savvy, and more intentional in how we engage with the digital ecosystem.

Give your content teeth — not just to gnash, but to tear through the veil. Recognize who is feeding the narrative, who is being used as aesthetic, and whose story is being told. Only then can our humor, our memes, and our creations move from passive consumption to active critique — capable of fighting back in a world designed to numb us.