Are Jakarta’s gubernatorial candidates out of touch with the city’s social media-obsessed youth? Well, both incumbents Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama/Djarot Saiful Hidayat and their rivals Anies Baswedan/Sandiaga Uno would like to lead you to think otherwise with their foray into the world of social media lately. But do they actually look they’re down with the kids, or do they just come off as cringey, like when parents try to use words they’re clearly not comfortable with like “meme” and “Tinder”?
Let’s start chronologically with Ahok and Djarot. Recently, the pair appeared in a couple of react videos by popular Indonesian meme aggregator Meme Comic Indonesia. As middle aged men, it’s pretty interesting to see what they think of the pop music scene (and all the profanity that goes with it). Perhaps there’s no better gauge for that than their reaction to viral hip-hop track ‘Dat $tick’ by Jakarta’s very own internationally famous rapper Rich Chigga:
Meme Comic Indonesia also has a far less interesting video of Ahok and Djarot reacting to a song by Indonesian diva Raisa. But soon we’ll be able to see them react to the strange/racy tune ‘BADASS’ by the ultra controversial social media celebrity Awkarin, as shown in the trailer here:
(Seriously though, is she trying to look like a hot ISIS executioner?)
Ahok has also launched a social media exclusive show called #AhokShow, in which he gets interviewed by celebrity hosts like Sarah Sechan, as well as partaking in games and challenges like “the flip bottle challenge” with his running mate Djarot:
As for Anies and Sandiaga, they too have taken part in numerous social media campaigns, such as ‘Anies Baswedan baca tweet jahat’ (Anies Baswedan reads mean tweets), which is inspired by American talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s popular segment:
In the video, Anies reads a tweet that called him an iblis (the devil), to which he responded that iblis is an acronym for “Union of Funny and Cute Men” in Indonesian.
Cute or not, some credit must be given to Anies and Sandiaga, who have done 17 of those mean tweets videos, for not reporting their so-called haters to the authorities for defamation and violation of the Information and Electronic Transactions Act (UU ITE), as other politicians have done in the past.
The challengers have also been quick to jump on the bandwagon of viral memes. One might remember the short-lived yet weirdly popular ‘Om Telolet Om’ meme of late 2016, which Anies and Sandi created their own take on:
Do you think the candidates trying way too hard to be hip, or should we be kind and take it as a sign that they actually care about the city’s youth?
One thing we can hopefully all agree on is that clean competition over likes and clicks (however cringey) is better than religious attacks any day of the week.
