War has always also been a question of propaganda, narrative-building, and the effort to win support for one’s cause. But modern technology compresses the distance in space and time between combat and its viewer to a minimum. You can watch full-length auteur films (the excellent 2000 Meters to Andriivka, for instance) as well as short combat clips. This obviously isn’t unique to the war in Ukraine: footage from inside combat — from all sides of the conflict — has been available from places like Syria too, including close-up shots of what weapons do to the human body. But the Ukrainian war brings an as-yet unsurpassed degree of intimacy, footage quality, and most importantly a genuinely new genre: shots straight from the drone, seconds before a living target turns into a pile of meat. And it works: what you used to find on specialized websites or niche forums is today Reels content that, say, your uncle sends you. With added music, “humorous captions,” or AI tweaks, so it’s really kino.
And I think it’s a genuinely interesting phenomenon worth attention, even if it isn’t the most important thing in the world or some mass issue affecting most of the population. But I’ll go ahead and predict that the further development of war and technology will mean more videos, more pleasantly produced, and… well, it strikes me as a very pathetic thing about which I’d like to lay out a few thoughts for my own thinking-through. At the same time, this is admittedly something I’ve argued about several times over the past few weeks and it’s soured some relationships, so writing my thoughts down “out loud” is just good for me.
I also won’t be linking to examples of the videos and the comments under them that piss me off. Why would I give them advertising? If you haven’t run into this anywhere, congratulations - you really don’t need to go looking.
Premises
A few things are, I think, worth saying upfront:
Russia’s attack on Ukraine is one of those wars where it’s absolutely and clearly possible to say “here is the aggressor doing terrible things, here is the defending state, there is no moral grey zone.” I don’t think it’s possible today to say “it’s complicated” or “Putin’s regime is actually in the right.” Sure, Ukraine as a state has its problems, but I’m not convinced that “the state had a corruption problem” is an adequate reason for war and assorted crimes against humanity. Within that defense, it is entirely legitimate that Ukrainians kill Russian soldiers by the means available to them.
Ukraine is trying to win support by every means. That’s understandable, it’s necessary, and given that we haven’t been able to help Ukraine quickly and decisively enough, it’s also something hard to blame them for. I have zero complaints about Ukrainians producing this kind of content.
Where I can, I try to convert “the feeling of support” into actual work and, mainly, money for Ukraine. But if you’re interested in the feelings of someone who’s actually fighting for the cause, you can find them here.
It feels a little embarrassing that I feel the need to lay this out, but I really wouldn’t want to discuss this with someone who comes in with “obviously this is bad, but Russia is in the right.”
Of course, if you don’t believe me at all, the “you shouldn’t be watching” argument is also made by a more serious figure, war reporter Aris Roussinos. And this essay in response to him is also, I think, a solid read.
Fandom
So why does it irritate me so much?
The utilitarian argument
It doesn’t help anything. A friend of Putin’s Russia will only be confirmed by a random soldier’s death in his belief that what stands against him are bloodthirsty beasts who can only be stopped by Putin’s enlightened hand.
If someone is in the “it’s complicated” camp, then the fanboy “holy shit guys, look at how that dude caught a grenade” effect is, I think, just destabilizing and leads to “war is awful, just give us any kind of peace.” And of course it also reinforces the impression that “Ukraine is supported by people who just like killing.” Which isn’t great, but I don’t know what else a random person is supposed to take away after seeing “oh great, here you can see this guy shitting himself right before he dies, fucker.”
If someone already supports Ukraine, fine, but I’m pretty sure that a video of some random guy dying in a field isn’t going to turn them into a more enthusiastic supporter who starts 3D-printing parts for drones or sends a few extra grand.
So the net effect is, imho, just negative. I’d love to see a study and then maybe concede in this direction with “oh actually it works great,” but for now I stand by this part. Maybe also because I’m not sure I value a supporter who needs a video of someone’s death in order to send a grand.
A different case, of course, is when Russian soldiers are the ones watching the videos, which is the primary audience.
The aesthetic argument
One could just say “I find it deeply cringe” and write nothing more. But seeing random dudes enthusiastically posting “you have to see this, a RUSKI got it” mainly reminds me of Remarque’s teacher Kantorek or the motivational officers from Starship Troopers - people who admire the beauty of war from the comfort of home and push as many others as possible into it. Just in an even slightly more sleazy form, because while Kantorek presumably actually imagined war as some kind of noble contest of ideas and nations (which is of course an utterly idiotic idea), here someone looks at “the machine delivered death into the filth and gore” and is like “yeah, awesome.”
Yes, it’s a purely aesthetic, emotional argument, a certain cringeworthiness.
The desensitization argument
Modern war and the deployment of even fully unmanned machines bring some unique problems. Even before them, taking prisoners was already a real problem: a burden, an uncertainty - taking a captive is always a bigger risk than just shooting the enemy. Combat via drones (and especially autonomous ones) makes all of this even harder in some respects. And yet I think that taking prisoners is, if one must wage war, the morally right thing, and it’s in humanity’s interest that it keep happening, that this part of the “what is okay to do in war” protocols be preserved as much as is realistically possible. Human lives are always valuable, and every single soldier fighting for one side or another is not a war criminal.
And it’s easy to forget the value of a human life when its main role becomes “he was a fairly entertaining target for 30 seconds.” That people die in war is awful in itself. In self-defense it’s also necessary, but why on earth would you cut away pieces of your own humanity for no reason at all? Whereas a film with some kind of conceptual framing can give context and humanity even to individuals, in a Reel you’re really just looking at a piece of meat in a uniform.
The cheering argument
Humanity doesn’t do many worse or more tragic things than war. It naturally deserves attention, and being able to defend oneself effectively is absolutely essential, because we’re not abolishing it as a concept any time soon and the world has no shortage of asshole regimes willing to wage it. In the “the worst person you know just made a great point” meme variant, Robert E. Lee dropped a major banger when he said “it is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”
Turning warfare into a contest of videos on socials, shifting from disgust at necessary combat to delight at “I really enjoy seeing the attackers die up close,” is a step toward someone starting to like it again. Most of all those who hope that in that trench, right before being splattered, it’ll always be someone else.
What to do about it
It’s simple: do what you want, you’ve got your own brain. But I think it’s very possible to resist the fascination of the spectacle and just not click on that video, or at least not forward it with how much you’re enjoying it. You can cheer passionately for, like, football or something.