The story: "[Joe] Biden, if you don’t help me, I will jump off the roof." With these sarcastic words, emerging YouTube and Tiktok star Ali Adil on July 15 appealed to the US president for help with leaving Iraq amid deteriorating services and security conditions. The clip has since gone viral on social media, garnering reactions from both Iraqi and US officials.

The coverage: The hashtag #Biden_Please_Help _Me in Arabic spread like wildfire on Iraqi social media, particularly after Ali's satire clip received a response from Joey Hood, the US acting assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs. In a video posted on social media July 18, Hood responded to Ali’s videos, asking him not to jump because "America loves him," and that "life is precious, it can be better."

After coming into the spotlight, Adil on July 21 got to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, who gave him a hat to protect him from the sun when he climbs up on the roof of his home the next time. Kadhimi also told the teenager that freedom of expression is guaranteed, and that he can criticize anything he wants.

Adil's meeting with Kadhimi sparked wide and varied reactions. Channels on the popular smartphone app Telegram and other platforms used by the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) criticized the prime minister, arguing that meeting with YouTubers is beneath the prestige of the state—especially after the July 19 explosion in Baghdad’s Sadr City, which killed at least 30 people. PMU and individual faction outlets alike accused Kadhimi of seeking to “show off.”

Al-Ahad, TV channel associated with Asa'ib Ahl Al-Haq (AAH), slammed the prime minister’s meeting with Adil on July 21, saying that Kadhimi “ignored families of the martyrs of the Sadr City explosion and [instead] met with a YouTuber.”

The US-funded Al-Hurra reported that the young Iraqi had received threats from unknown groups in the aftermath of all the attention from the US State Department and Kadhimi. It added that he now fears leaving his home in southern Iraq.

UTV channel also covered the story. In an interview with the outlet, Adil expressed the suffering that many Iraqis experience, and especially among the youth, saying, "the young men abroad wake up in the morning to go to study, then to swim, but the Iraqi young men wake up to buy fuel for generators."

The context/analysis: This is not the first time that 17-year-old Adil, a high school student, has published such videos. A year ago, he posted a clip in which he appealed to then US president Donald Trump to help him solve the electricity crisis in Iraq. He also published a video in Nov. 2020 in which he appealed to then President-elect Biden to invite him to the United States to escape the flooded streets of his home town.

Adil’s pages on Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok are full of clips expressing the hardships that Iraqis face given the constant electricity cuts, unpaved roads and poor Internet services. In his July 15 video addressed to Biden from the roof of his home, heavy gunfire can be heard in the background. Adil then shakes his hands and says, “This is fire Biden, you listen?” This usage of sarcastic simple English mixed with Arabic is what seems to be making his videos so popular.

Kadhimi’s meeting with the young Iraqi sparked intense criticism from the PMU and associated groups because Adil’s desire to travel to the US is perceived as flattery to the Americans. The bigger political backdrop is the tensions between Kadhimi and Iran-backed groups over the US military presence in Iraq.

Indeed, the Iraqi prime minister met with Adil in the days leading up to his latest visit to Washington, where he held talks with President Biden. As Amwaj.media has previously reported, the two sides announced that US combat troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of this year.

The future: Adil has achieved wide fame with his videos, gaining more than half a million followers on TikTok alone. But the price of this fame and his dream of leaving Iraq might be exorbitant in a country where activists are routinely targeted with impunity by armed groups.

Yet, Adil is part of a new generation that is immersed in modern technology and social media. While one voice may be silenced, the bigger picture is the rise of a generation of younger social media influencers in Iraq.