Dawn Images

The protests in Istanbul over the past few days, sparked by the detention on March 19 of Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the chief political rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have taken an unexpected turn with the emergence of surreal, meme-worthy visuals.

Among these, a Pikachu-costumed protester fleeing riot police and AI-generated images of the Joker joining the demonstrations have gone viral, transforming a tense political confrontation into a global spectacle.

This phenomenon raises critical questions about the nature of protest in the digital age. Is this a spontaneous, organic outpouring of absurdist humour or a regime-change operation leveraging hyperreality? How do we interpret such protests in an era where deepfakes, AI-generated imagery and viral memes blur the line between reality and fiction?

How does digital spectacle reshape political resistance?

Viral spectacle

The detention of Istanbul’s mayor on corruption charges — widely perceived as politically motivated — triggered mass demonstrations, with nearly 1,900 arrests reported by Thursday. The protests reflect deep societal fractures, with İmamoğlu symbolising resistance against Erdoğan’s authoritarian rule.

Amid water cannons and riot police, a demonstrator in an inflatable Pikachu costume became an unlikely icon of defiance. The imagery juxtaposing a cartoonish Pokémon with state repression resonated globally, spawning memes declaring “Gotta catch ’em all” and “Pokémon uprising”.

The contrast between the playful, childlike figure and police brutality creates cognitive dissonance, amplifying the protest’s emotional impact. The viral spread of the footage, amassing over nine million views on X by Friday, demonstrates how internet culture reframes political struggle, making it digestible for global audiences.

Beyond Pikachu, AI-manipulated images inserted fictional characters such as the Joker and Spider-Man into the protests, further distorting reality. Some netizens even superimposed Pikachu floating above the crowd, blending satire with misinformation.

How does hyperreality — French theorist Jean Baudrillard’s concept of reality being replaced by symbols — shape public perception of the protests?

The spectacle

Jean Baudrillard argued that in postmodern society, signs and images replace reality, creating a simulated world where distinctions between truth and fiction collapse.

Applied to the Istanbul protests, the Pikachu protester is no longer just a man in a costume: it is a symbolic, hyperreal event, detached from its original context. The AI-generated imagery of The Joker further dissolves reality, making the protest a media spectacle rather than a purely political act.

Baudrillard might argue that the protest’s viral nature erases its political substance, reducing it to an aestheticised digital event.

French philosopher Guy Debord in The Society of the Spectacle contends that capitalist modernity turns life into a series of spectacles, where passive consumption replaces active engagement. The Istanbul protests, mediated through viral videos, exemplify this transformation, as dissent becomes entertainment.

The Pikachu runner, stripped of its revolutionary potential by social media’s attention economy, becomes a commodified image, reinforcing Debord’s critique of spectacle as a tool of depoliticisation.

Canadian thinker Marshall McLuhan’s insight that communication technologies reshape human perception is equally relevant. The TikTok-ification of protest — short, absurdist clips optimised for virality — changes how resistance is perceived. Memes, once dismissed as frivolous, now function as propaganda, wielded by both protesters and state actors.

Regime-change narratives

The line between organic and orchestrated protest is increasingly blurred. The Pikachu stunt mirrors historical uses of absurdity in protest, from Pussy Riot’s punk performances in Russia to the meme-driven activism of the Anonymous group. Yet, the possibility of infiltration — whether by foreign entities or algorithmic amplification — cannot be dismissed.

Deepfakes and AI-generated protest images further complicate the landscape, blurring fact and fiction to the point where real dissent becomes indistinguishable from manufactured chaos. If protesters (or state actors) flood the internet with fake protest visuals, does it weaken the movement — or strengthen it?

The answer may lie in the evolving tactics of cognitive warfare, where perception management is as critical as physical confrontation.

Absurdist humour

The Istanbul protests exemplify 21st-century resistance, where absurdist humour disarms state repression, hyperreality reconfigures political meaning and cognitive warfare exploits digital virality. Baudrillard might see this as the triumph of simulation, where the protest’s image matters more than its reality.

Yet, the persistence of physical crackdowns, with hundreds of arrests, reminds us that real violence underlies the spectacle.

For activists, the lesson is clear: in the attention economy, semiotics is power. For scholars, the challenge is decoding where the protest ends and the meme begins. As the boundaries between reality and hyperreality dissolve, the future of dissent may depend on who controls the narrative — and who masters the art of the spectacle.

This article was originally published on Scroll.in on March 28 and has been reproduced with permission.

Cover art via @SaadAbedine & @turuncmutlu