Today the Taliban govern Afghanistan not only by coercion but by shaping what outsiders are allowed to see. Since their return to power, a surge of influencers, vloggers, adventure tourists and public figures have traveled to Afghanistan and posted videos presenting it as “safe,” “peaceful” or “not what the media says.” Clips titled “Afghanistan is not what you think” or “The media lied” circulate widely on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, showing calm streets, crowded markets and friendly encounters — sometimes even smiling interactions with Taliban members. At first glance these may look like personal travelogues. But they are selective constructions that obscure who can move freely and who is excluded, especially women.
These creators do not simply offer alternate truths; they stage a specific image I call “performative safety.” They film in controlled places where everyday life can be shown without visible repression, and they omit the systemic constraints that make such scenes possible. The result is a media product valued for its surprise and shareability rather than its representativeness. In an attention economy where algorithms prioritize surprising, emotionally engaging content, “safety” sells precisely because it contradicts dominant assumptions about Afghanistan. The more a clip challenges expectations, the more engagement it attracts — and the more likely it is to be promoted.
But the safety shown in these videos is highly unequal. Foreign men and women, and some male locals, can be visibly mobile in ways Afghan women cannot. While Afghan women are detained, humiliated, barred from education, work and public spaces, visiting foreign women may eat in restaurants, take photos with armed men, or joke with local officials — activities denied to most Afghan women. Instances such as the widely reported visit by an American pornographic actress are not harmless curiosities; they expose a stark double standard: the same public spaces that are off-limits or dangerous for Afghan women become “open” when occupied by outsiders. Presenting these exceptions as typical flattens the reality of structural gendered exclusion.
Safety as shown by influencers is therefore staged. Creators choose what to highlight and what to leave out — the absence of women from markets, checkpoints that enforce mobility restrictions, threats against educators and activists, and everyday policing of women’s behavior rarely appear in upbeat clips. This staging transforms a limited, conditional experience into what appears to viewers as a general social condition. When the dominant visual narrative of Afghanistan becomes calm and ordinary, it diminishes the perceived severity of the regime’s restrictions and normalizes authoritarian control.
Representation here is not neutral. Whether intentional or not, these portrayals perform political work: they reduce the symbolic costs of repression. When Taliban fighters are shown as friendly, ordinary or even comical, the system they enforce recedes from view. Violence and exclusion go unseen, and audiences are less likely to judge or resist the underlying politics. In this sense, influencers can become unwitting participants in a broader project of making a repressive system appear livable.
The ethical stakes extend beyond misrepresentation. In an environment of limited legal protections and opaque governance, the normalizing image of “safe” Afghanistan can have real-world consequences. Rapidly shared videos that present travel as low-risk can encourage adventure-seeking viewers to attempt visits without adequate institutional support. Evidence from other authoritarian contexts shows that foreign nationals can be detained and used for political leverage. In Afghanistan, where accountability is minimal, such risks are concrete. Thus the distance between digital image and physical action collapses: what begins as viral content can lead to dangerous on-the-ground outcomes for unprepared travelers.
This dynamic also raises questions of complicity. Influencers who frame Afghanistan as benign are not merely reporting a personal experience; they are choosing a political image. The issue is not necessarily malicious intent — many creators genuinely believe they are offering a corrective to sensationalist media — but intention matters less than effect. By excising repression and the daily reality of Afghan women from their frames, creators produce an image that helps legitimize exclusionary practices. Representation becomes an ethical act: it can illuminate oppression or hide it. Too often, these videos do the latter.
Understanding why creators produce such content requires attention to platform incentives. Algorithms reward novelty, surprise and emotional punch — formats that work best with short, vivid scenes and simple narratives. Complex structural analyses of gendered repression do not fit easily into 60-second reels or dramatic thumbnails. So creators are pushed toward reductive portrayals that maximize clicks and shares. The attention economy thus amplifies content that simplifies and sanitizes, even when that simplification obscures grave human rights problems.
What would a more responsible visual practice look like? First, more context: acknowledging who is absent from the frame, who cannot appear in the footage without risking harm, and how permissions and gatekeeping shape access. Second, attention to power differentials: recognizing that foreign bodies can traverse spaces Afghan women cannot and making that inequality explicit rather than treating it as incidental. Third, restraint: resisting the impulse to monetize surprise at the expense of accuracy, and considering how images might encourage dangerous behavior among impressionable viewers.
Ultimately the question is not simply whether social-media images are “true” or “false.” It is how they reshape reality by showing some things and erasing others. When influencers produce a dominant visual narrative of calm, they do more than tell stories — they participate in a politics of visibility that can normalize repression and marginalize the lived experiences of the most affected. Representation in this case becomes part of power: shaping what repression can hide and what the world is allowed to ignore.
[Rita Roberts edited this piece.]
