Dispatch #25
Read about social media influencers in Gaza, new gambling laws in Thailand, political satire in Romania and Italian AI-generated online memes
Hello and welcome to Translator’s weekly Dispatch, where we bring you summaries of compelling stories written beyond the Anglosphere.
First up, a perplexing and powerful in-depth piece about social media influencers and content creators in Gaza, the role they are playing in reporting on the daily realities of life in Gaza, and how they also provide a window on unexpected forms of resilience.
From Thailand, a think piece about gambling, as the Thai government legalises casinos for the first time in decades.
An article from Romania about what jokes can say and what they can’t, and the role of satire in different political and economic systems.
And lastly, an investigation into the phenomenon of the “Italian brainrot” online meme aesthetic, blending AI chimeras, absurdist nursery rhymes with Gen Z humour and what this might say about the current memescape.
We hope you enjoy the read.
P.S.: In the meantime, tell us what you like and dislike, themes you’d like to see explored from the perspective of different linguistic media landscapes. And, as ever, feel free to recommend specific pieces we should summarise for our Dispatches, or translate in full for the magazine.
Here’s what we’re looking for and how to let us know.
Influencers in the Apocalypse
A former French cultural attaché in Jerusalem profiles Gaza’s Instagram influencers and content creators, showing how their activities shape the war, report on its horrors and provide a window onto unexpected forms of resilience and resistance
Palestinians’ successful use of social media as a tool to share information (locally and globally), generate concern, and report on the on-the-ground reality of lives often ignored by the mainstream Western media did not begin on 7 October 2023.
As an article by Aude Thepenier in Orient XXI points out, the hashtag #SaveSheikhJarrah has been used a million times in English on Instagram (and nearly the same number in Arabic) since its origination in 2021 in protest against ongoing threats of expulsion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem. WhatsApp and Telegram have become powerful tools of organisation. Palestinian online presence – and posts in perfect English – are one of the reasons, Thepenier suggests, for a shift in sympathy towards the Palestinian plight over several years: “their visibility online has changed the global perception of Palestine.”
But the brutal violence of Israel’s response to the atrocious attacks of Hamas on 7 October 2023, has nonetheless marked a new phase: “the first genocide transmitted live onto the screens of our smart phones.” Through all this, Gaza’s Instagram influencers and content creators have continued, despite intermittent electricity, patchy internet access and the threat of famine. Not all have survived; some are now silent.
In the space of just ten days after 7 October 2023, the following of photojournalist Motaz Azaïza (@motaz_azaiza) grew from 25,000 to 1 million, reaching 9 million by the end of that month, and 16.9 million today. Instagram accounts such as that of storyteller Bisan Owda (@wizard.bisan1), with its daily dispatches, filled the gap left open by mainstream media about what was happening on the ground in Gaza, provoking intense global engagement. We wanted to know more about Bisan’s whereabouts and livelihood. Had she survived the night? How was she coping with the incessant surveillance, the awful living conditions, the forced displacement and bombing? Would we see her again? And so, the world watched the twenty-five-years-olds’ life unfold in real-time.
Motaz Azaïza has become recognisable the world over, in his padded navy-blue body armour with “press” in white lettering. Bisan Owad’s barrel curls have recently trended on TikTok as Bisan Hair. She begins each video post with the same line: “Hi everyone, it’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m still alive”. She has been the subject of an Al Jazeera documentary.
As Thepenier notes, putting a name to a face helps us empathise with Gaza’s’ plight. But there is more to these traditional influencers than their appearance: both Azaïza’s and Owda’s reporting is raw and direct. They don’t mince words when they show us their lived realities amidst famine, forced displacement and lack of hygiene. Whether they bite into their first carrot in months or lament about painful skin diseases, their suffering becomes personal and accessible. This rawness earned Owda an Emmy and being named one of the 25 most influential women of 2024 in the world by the Financial Times.
Yet Thepenier also looks to more unsung heroes: the content creators and influencers that vlog about cooking, fitness, gardening and other everyday activities in the warzone. “Each of them brings a direct and precious perspective on what is happening in Gaza”, notes Thepenier: “with all the daily difficulties, the devastation, the unsustainable aspect, but also the small moments of happiness and humour.”
Each influencer had a different job before the conflict: clothes designer Basma Abu Shahla’s house (@basma_shahla, 635k followers) was partially destroyed in April 2024; now she makes “cocooning” reels with homemade pastries and comfort snacks. Hamada Shaqoura (@hamadashoo, 582k followers) was a food blogger; now he runs Watermelon Relief1 soup kitchen. Well versed in the codes of the gram, they know how to adapt and generate visibility – like the personal trainer Mohamed Hatem (@gym_rat_in_gaza, 221k followers) who provides online fitness classes or Ibrahim Abu Karsh (@ibrahimkarsh, 40.2k followers) whose DIY skills include straining water through filters made from cotton and gauze, making a small auxiliary heater from empty cans, or a candle whose smell repels mosquitos.
They also know, on occasion, how to evince the guilt of the distant voyeurs. Food blogger Shaquoura is so well versed in the kitchen that he doesn’t need to concentrate on the tasks at hand; rather his piercing gaze fixes us through the lens as he prepares food from meagre ingredients as if to say: “look what I’m obliged to do, and under which circumstances!”
Elsewhere, Thepenier mentions child bloggers, including the eleven-year-old Renad (@renadfromgaza, 1.2 million followers) who cooks on a modest stove behind the family tent. She shows us “the Gazan way of cooking.” Her older sister Nour films Renad, dubs the videos in English and posts them on her Instagram account, complete with her trademark interjections: “yallah nbalhes” (“come on, let’s go”) and “wallah tejaaaaanen” (“I swear it’s crazy”).
Not all influencers in Thepenier’s article are still alive, or active. Take for example, the eight-years-old orphan Ahmed whose father passed away earlier this year. Since April 2024, he had continuously updated us about his situation, posting videos of himself gardening on his late father’s account (@tasnemaaed, 1 million followers). We encountered him harvesting corn and onions next to his tent in Rafah; plants he brought with him during his family’s forced displacement. There’s been much less since his father passed.
Then there are the outside comments some influencers receive on their posts, which, in Thepenier’s words, can be “systematic, argumentative or sarcastic.” But these influencers shouldn’t always need to justify “what isn’t shown directly in their daily routines: death, destructions and the difficulties of finding temporary housing or quite simply just looking for water.” Like us, they have the right to post what they want and when; their plight and suffering shouldn’t dictate their content. Not even in a warzone.
Thepenier concludes that often, a prolonged absence suggests their inability to post. But this also binds us to their accounts, as she helplessly notes: “and us, behind our small screens, we can do nothing but hoping they’re safe and sound.”
Original article (“Gaza. Influenceurs par temps de génocide”) by Aude Thepenier first published in French on 2 June 2025.
It’s available here.
OrientXXI is a Paris-based digital platform writing about the Middle East and North Africa.
Summary by ML
When the House Always Wins: Rethinking Gambling Laws in Thailand
As Thailand makes casinos legal for the first time in decades, Tawan Manakul argues that moral outrage misses the point
Gambling has been around as long as people have been drawn to then mysteries of chance.
Archaeologists have found dice and betting records in ruins from ancient Mesopotamia to China, reminders that we’ve always had an appetite for risk. Even the Greek word for justice, dike, comes from “to throw,” as in throwing dice.
But wherever gambling has existed, so have efforts to control or ban it. In ancient Egypt, habitual gamblers were sentenced to hard labour in the quarries. Similar prohibitions show up in the laws of China and Rome, and in religious texts such as the Talmud and the Qur’an. It’s an old tension: the pull to play versus the fear of what might happen if we do.
Thailand is now at a new crossroads in this age-old debate. After nearly a century of strict gambling laws, the government approved a controversial bill earlier this year to legalize casino operations. It’s a dramatic shift that has caught the attention of Thai social theorist Tawan Manakul, who describes himself as addicted to gambling (or at least the subject of gambling). For him, gambling isn’t just a personal habit; it’s an academic puzzle. He once went to a casino to play roulette purely to test his ideas, knowing full well he’d lose.
While teaching a course on public policy ethics, Manakul found himself digging through British parliamentary debates on gambling. He expected to find moral sermonizing or arguments about economic costs and benefits. What he found instead surprised him: over many decades British lawmakers have returned to the issue again and again, not to decide whether gambling is good or evil, but to build a framework of rights.
From this, Manakul draws three simple but radical conclusions. First, gambling shouldn’t be viewed as inherently evil. Second, people have a right to gamble. And third, that right can be limited if it causes real harm - to others or to oneself. “Policy decisions shouldn’t waste time debating whether gambling is a sin,” he writes. “They should focus on where to draw the line, based on actual risks and real contexts.”
Manakul points out the irony that banning gambling doesn’t make it go away; it just pushes it out of sight. A 2023 survey by Thailand’s Research Centre for Social Development found that more than half of the population had gambled that year, despite the ban. In Manakul’s view, that kind of gap between law and reality does more damage than gambling itself. He praises the British model for being more honest about people’s behaviour: when laws reflect what people actually do, they can protect rights and reduce harm more effectively. “Laws that clash with how people live,” he says, “just create new problems and undermine the system meant to protect us all.”
Still, he’s clear that recognizing gambling as a right doesn’t mean throwing open the doors to casinos on every street corner. Rights come with responsibilities. The goal is to find the balance: sometimes that might mean legalizing certain kinds of gambling to reduce the lure of the black market; sometimes it might mean stricter rules, or even new bans if the evidence shows that’s needed. The point, Manakul argues, is to treat gambling as a fact of life, and to shape policies that deal with it as it really is, not just as we fear it might be.
Original article (“จากเฮนรีที่ 8 สู่คาสิโนเสรี:ข้อถกเถียงเรื่องสิทธิและข้อจำกัดการเล่นพนันฉบับไม่เหยียด”) by Tawan Manakul first published in Thai on 2 May 2025.
It’s available here.
101 Magazine is Thai publication produced by a team of academics, researchers, editors, writers, directors, creatives, and graphic designers aiming to connect the ‘world of knowledge’ with the ‘world of creativity’, and wider society.
Summary by TMH
Legalise Comedy
Romania’s evolving political satire reveals what jokes can say and what they can’t
In this thoughtful and subtly sharp essay, Romanian writer Dan Panaet traces the country’s long, awkward relationship with political comedy. Starting with Divertis, the subversive sketch troupe that became a household name in the 1980s under Ceaușescu’s Communist dictatorship, and ending in today’s meme-driven satire economy, the essay is about more than just laughter. It’s about the changing thresholds of freedom, fear, and what can still be said when so much has become unspeakable.
“Comedy,” Panaet writes, “is like a rabbit's foot. It’s not always effective, but it’s good to have around when you're scared.” This uneasy comfort sets the tone for a reflection on humour’s role in Romanian society - past and present. In the 1980s, Divertis relied on metaphor, ambiguity, and plausible deniability to mock the regime. Audiences read between the lines, laughing both with and against power. But in today’s Romania, where there’s ostensibly more freedom of expression, satire faces new paradoxes: jokes go viral but rarely provoke; comedians have followers, but not necessarily impact.
“Now, humour risks humanising the very politicians it should be skewering,” Panaet argues. With populism on the rise and scandals multiplying, comedy often cushions rather than confronts. “It’s easier to make fun of someone than to hold them accountable.” The essay points out that in a country where politics already verges on self-parody, satire can feel redundant. When reality itself becomes absurd, what is left to exaggerate?
He doesn’t idealise the past. “Divertis didn’t overthrow the regime,” one former member of the troupe admits. “But we made people laugh in dark times. That counted for something.” Yet Panaet is suspicious of how that legacy is consumed today: nostalgia without critique, subversion turned safe. It’s a concern echoed in his brief foray into documentary filmmaking, a project he ultimately abandoned, unsure how to capture comedy’s evasive politics on screen.
Online, political humour has splintered into memes and micro-punchlines. TikTokers mimic ministers, stand-ups poke fun at mayors, and satire sites offer rapid-fire takes. But while the speed and reach of these formats is unprecedented, so is their ephemerality. Panaet wonders: can satire that disappears in 24 hours still leave a dent?
And then there’s the audience. “What if people aren’t angry anymore?” he asks. “What if they just want to be entertained?” The laughter that once punctured fear has become ambient noise. Or worse: a coping mechanism for cynicism. At its best, humour can provoke, reveal, even mobilise. But more often, it dissipates tension without resolving it.
Still, Panaet insists that humour remains vital, not because it changes the world, but because it reveals its contradictions. “In the gaps of laughter, something political can still grow,” he writes. “The laugh isn’t always against someone—it’s sometimes a recognition of what we don’t yet have the words to say.” His final thought is not one of despair, but of quiet insistence: that even in a post-truth, post-irony, post-everything moment, comedy still gestures at something true.
Original article (“Legalizați comedia! Umorul politic și lucrurile care nu se spun.”) by Dan Panaet was first published in Romanian on 19 May 2025.
It’s available here.
Scena9 is a Romanian online cultural magazine known for its interdisciplinary essays, reportage, and visual storytelling across art, politics, and society.
Summary by ZN
The Delirious Mythology of Italian Brainrot
How AI chimeras, absurd nursery rhymes, and Gen Z humour has birthed a chaotic new online aesthetic
Even in a world overrun by online content, the viral surge of so-called Italian “brainrot” (2024 word of the year in the Oxford English Dictionary) is something different, something remarkable. Look it up and find yourself transported in a universe of the uncanny. Stay too long and find yourself in a queasy state of disconnection from the real world – or going further and further down the rabbit hole.
Italian brainrot is a prolific online meme genre born of AI hallucinations, ridiculous rhymes, and digital derangement that refuses to make sense. And that’s exactly why it resonates, Diego De Angelis suggests, in an article for the Italian online publication L’Indiscreto. De Angelis’s essay on the phenomenon dives into this surreal internet subculture through characters such as Bombardiro Crocodilo and Trippi Troppi: grotesque figures often generated via AI, paired with pounding music and Dadaist verse. The result is “a bombastic mythology” that has infected social media timelines around the world despite (or maybe sometimes even because of) its lack of narrative coherence or semantic logic.
Originally emerging on TikTok, Italian brainrot memes are recognisably chaotic, low-resolution, and “cooked” (over-processed in a way that mimics digital decay). Their creators often combine mismatched AI-generated animal parts with nursery rhyme cadences in mutated Italian language that feel both childlike and threatening.
For instance, a character such as Bombombini Gusini, the half goose-half plane sibling of Bombardiro, appears in a bizarre verse about a Georgian man with two watermelons under his arms. And yet, this world has rules. “Each character has a page on brainrot.fandom.com,” De Angelis notes, “complete with a bio, historical events, and theme songs.” It’s a full-fledged, community-built pantheon of digitally mutated creatures.
Why has it taken off? First, the aesthetic is aligned with how some in Gen Z and Gen Alpha already engage with the world: through platforms like Minecraft and Skibidi Toilet, which normalise surrealism, fragmented storytelling, and a kind of cheerful nihilism. Second, even non-Italian speakers are obsessed – indeed the memes first became famous in the US, Latin America and Germany - proof that “meaningless” content can still carry emotional or aesthetic weight. As De Angelis puts it, “the nonsense, the soundplay, the lack of logic… they mesmerise.” Brainrot is not about understanding; it’s about vibe.
De Angelis also sketches out a philosophical throughline in his article. Some creators have drawn parallels to early 20th-century Italian Futurism, particularly Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Futurist poem Zang Tumb Tumb, a typographical barrage meant to mimic the sound and chaos of battle. One observers cites the concept of hyper-reality made famous by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, a point beyond which reality and representation, the real and the simulated, become confused.
In this meme-scape, the grotesque is beautiful, randomness is structure, and logic is beside the point. As Aiden Walker writes in his Substack How To Do Things With Memes, brainrot’s real power may be in parodying “Western rationality itself”: its tier lists, scientific classifications, and semantic hierarchies. Trippi Troppi and Camelo Frigo don’t exist outside the grid; they build their own.
Ultimately, De Angelis argues that Italian brainrot offers “not just degeneration, but experimentation”, a form of digital surrealism for a generation fluent in nonsense. Whether it fades or evolves, it has already reshaped the memescape.
Original article (“L’estetica memetica del brainrot italiano”) by Diego De Angelis first published in Italian on 22 April 2025.
It’s available here.
L'Indiscreto is an Italian online magazine dedicated to critical thought, cultural experimentation, and speculative nonfiction. It publishes essays, reviews, and commentaries that blur the lines between philosophy, literature, and digital culture.
Summary by ZN
That’s all for now – we hope you’ve enjoyed the read. Keep an eye out for our next Dispatch of summaries this time next week!
The Translator team