The United States was waiting for answers. If there would be a military landing in Iran. If the war was going to escalate one step further.
Instead, videos arrived.
A short shot. Some legs A voice: “It’s launching soon, right?“. The clip appeared on the official White House account and disappeared 90 minutes later, without explanation.
After 45 minutes there was another one: black screen, a notification sound, the American flag that appears, flashes and fades. This is not deleted.
The video is still on the official profile, it has gone viral and accumulates more than 7,000 comments of users asking the same question:what does it mean?.
There is no answer. And it doesn’t seem like an accident.
In recent weeks, Donald Trump’s team has been shifting the institutional tone of its official accounts towards something else: ambiguous pieces, internet codes, trends… Thoughtful videos not to explain, bell to circulate.
And therein lies the real problem.
Because that same language has already been transferred to war. Real bombings turned into a viral spectacle, with video game music and aestheticswhich have accumulated millions of views and have unleashed the rejection of those who have been on the front lines.
Communication in TikTok format
For years, U.S. institutional communication—especially around war—has been one of the most closely watched areas of power. Measured messages, controlled images and language designed to convey authority and containment.
Even in its most propagandistic moments, the story avoided crossing the line of entertainment. That barrier has now disappeared.
The videos broadcast from the White House profiles of the combat in Iran combine explosions with fragments of GTA, Call of Duty, Dragon Ball Z or SpongeBob SquarePants, accompanied by popular music and visual effects designed to circulate on networks.
In one of them, a missile attack appears synchronized with the song “Here Comes the Boom“. In another, explosions are interspersed with scenes from sports video games.
War content adapts to the dominant format of Instagram and TikTok: brief, striking, recognizable. Designed not to be explained, but to be shared.
The White House maintains that these contents reflect the “resounding success” of the military operation and pride in the army’s capabilities. But privately, the argument is more pragmatic: They work. They go viral.
Among those who defend the strategy there are also young people who have directly participated in the political ecosystem that brought Trump back to the White House. Malcolm Davis, a 21-year-old student at the University of Georgia and a get-out-the-vote volunteer during the 2024 campaign, believes these videos do their job.
In his opinion, the memes They work because they “show how strong and powerful the United States is on the world stage” in language that your generation recognizes and consumes daily. Davis admits they may be “tacky” to some, but frames it as an inevitable change. “That’s how it is how to communicate today“.
Outraged veterans
The problem is that this language is not neutral. And those who are pointing it out first are those who have experienced the war off the screen.
Joe Buccinoa colonel retired after 27 years of service and several deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, sums it up harshly. “They are completely downplaying what they are asking the nation to do. It seems almost obscene“.
The criticism even crosses the conservative sphere. John Vickexecutive director of Concerned Veterans for America, warns that “gamifying or trivializing war downplays the sacrifice of Americans who have died and hides the cost of endless conflict.
From a younger generation, Connor CrehanIraq veteran and podcast co-host Bold Americantakes it to the personal level: “Seeing my friends sacrifice themselves to the maximum… and now these sensational videos… I can’t imagine how families feel“.
That impact is direct for those who have lost someone in combat. Karen Meredithmother of a soldier killed in Iraq and activist at VoteVets, describes it. “We know that war is not a game. And every day is like thousand cuts“. In the same vein, Bonnie Carroll, founder of TAPS—an organization that supports families of deceased military personnel—recalls: “For our families this is real. It is life or death.”
The rejection has transcended the military. Steve Downesvoice of the protagonist of Haloa popular science fiction video game saga focused on futuristic military combat, rated one of the videos as “disgusting and child war porn“.
Even the church has spoken out. The cardinal Bubble Cupicharchbishop of Chicago, denounced that suffering is being used as entertainment and warned of a “profound moral failure“.
More than a matter of taste, the warning is clear: changing the language of war implies also changing how it is understood and how much it is tolerated.
Trump doesn’t plan to stop
The most significant thing is that the controversy has not caused a change in strategy. On the contrary. Trump’s entourage openly presumes that indignation is part of the mechanism.
When the singer Kesha protested the use of her music in one of the videos, the response came from the White House communications director himself, Steven Cheungwho celebrated it without nuances.
The criticism, he explained, “only gives us more attention and more views“. In the digital ecosystem, rejection does not penalize. It amplifies.
The strategy is clear: dominate the conversation. Generate content that circulates, that provokes, that forces a reaction. Turning war into a constant stream of stimuli competing for attention in the same space as any other viral content.
But while the videos accumulate millions of views, the war continues outside the social media wall.
The conflict has entered its fourth week with threats of escalation, uncertain negotiations and a sustained increase in victims. Also doubts. “Most Americans want to know how and when we will achieve victory“warns John Vick. “That’s what should be being communicated.”
It’s not happening.
Instead, the story is filled with visual impact without explanations. And that is where the risk that veterans and analysts point out appears: that this narrative generates an emotional distance between society and the real cost of the conflict.
On the same day that six US service members died in a plane crash, the White House released a video that mixed explosions in Iran with celebrations at a sporting event.
In another case, after learning of a missile attack near a school where dozens of children died, a video of the bombing accompanied by festive music.
To Rosa Brooksa former Pentagon official, that disconnect can have quick political consequences: Support for the war can erode when deaths rise and objectives are unclear.
“People will start to wonder if the troops are being treated like pawns in a game“he explains.
Because no war is legitimized by its visual impact, but by its purpose. And that purpose does not go viral: it explains, is justified and is assumed with all its cost.
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