After the second presidential debate on Sunday, unicorns — referring to startups with over a billion-dollar-valuation, not the magically horned horses — became a hot topic in Indonesia, especially after candidate Prabowo Subianto responded to a question from President Joko Widodo about how he’d support and foster more unicorns by asking the incumbent to clarify the term.
READ: Lies and unicorns: Round up of the second Indonesian presidential debate, in memes
Many memesters criticized Prabowo over his response and took it to mean that the Gerindra chairman was out of touch with the country’s high-tech scene. But one small group of millennial activists took the candidate’s perceived lack of unicorn expertise as an offense serious enough to require a real-life protest, complete with My Little Pony toys as illustration.
The group, calling themselves Komunitas Blogger Milenial, held their #saveunicorn demonstration yesterday afternoon at the the Patung Kuda (Horse Statue) roundabout near the National Monument in Jakarta yesterday. Although the group was not large, they managed to attract a great deal of attention with their plush unicorn dolls and banners with slogans saying “ We are millenials that are disappointed there is a presidential candidate that doesn’t know the term “unicorn”, so of course doesn’t have a program #SaveUnicorn”.
Rifaiz Lamahoda, identified as the head of the millenial blogger group, told several news outlets that his group was unhappy that “one candidate” didn’t know about unicorns (they never specifically called out Prabowo) and said that whoever won needed to have a good program to help create more Indonesian unicorns since they can provide great opportunities for young Indonesians.
So what is Komunitas Blogger Milenial? We could find no information on the group prior to this protest action — oftentimes such ad-hoc protest groups are the result of astro-turfing (i.e. campaigns secretly paying third parties to protest on their behalf). And indeed, some have noted that the group’s alleged leader seems to have been a spokesperson to several, very different protest groups.
Untuk mas Blogger Melenia. Aku mau dong nulis di blog njenengan, lumayan buat nambah-nambah backlink.
*eh pic.twitter.com/DSKzpqWF0Q
— Nasirullah Sitam (@Nasirullah5itam) February 20, 2019
Could this be another incident of campaigners using paid protesters to try and make a minor-controversy molehill into a giant magical horse mountain? Or maybe there are just a lot of tech sector bronies in Jakarta that don’t want Prabowo mixing up their favorite unicorns? Let us know what you think in the comments below or on social media.
