In a humorous video circulating online in the Middle East, explosions wake a young man at night, making him bolt upright and dash to his parents’ bedroom, looking disheveled in pajamas.
“There’s WW3 and you go to your Arab parents,” reads the text that sets the premise.
The father barely stirs, murmuring a Quranic verse about fate before drifting back to sleep, snoring loudly. When the son tells his mother that he is afraid, she reprimands him for his appearance.
“Are you serious?” she asks. “You are wearing a T-shirt and not even wearing socks?”
The tone may be light, but the substance could not be heavier.
For more than two years now, the Middle East has been convulsed by conflicts that have taken a devastating toll and reshaped the region. The violence has expanded to multiple fronts from the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and the U.S.-Israel war on Iran to Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Persian Gulf states and the Hezbollah-Israel conflict in Lebanon.
In response, Arab content creators and influencers on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube have turned to a macabre brand of humor to bring levity to a pain that often feels too raw.
“I do feel sad for my country and people, but I like to turn to this dark comedy to make sense of it,” said Samer Moumneh, 22, a content creator from Lebanon who starred in the video poking fun at Arab parents. “We always like to cope through humor.”
One popular clip that has been circulating shows a woman opening and closing sliding doors over and over — a metaphor for the Strait of Hormuz’s swings between shutdowns and reopenings since the war with Iran began.
Another video mimics a scene from the TV show “Arab Idol,” with anxious contestants awaiting results, comparing this to people across the region nervously waiting to see whether cease-fires will be reached.
The morbid humor is part of a broader rise of comedy across the Middle East. A barrage of new material is emanating from a young, internet-savvy generation raised on social media, where humor travels quickly and the rewards can be immediate.
These digital creators are globally connected, drawing on influences from cultures and conversations far beyond the Middle East.
In a region shaped by monarchies, authoritarian governments and conservative values, comedy is one of the few outlets to say in veiled critiques what often can’t be said outright.
“Wars and conflict and disasters are debilitating, and so people want creative ways that can help them deal with issues day by day,” said Isam Uraiqat, the co-founder of a satirical news website, Alhudood, an Arabic version of The Onion.
The site has published a flurry of articles and animated content on the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. They include pieces titled “Iran on the verge of liberation, just like Iraq,” or “Four scenarios to end the war, six to continue it and none that are in your interest.”
“We see it as our job to inform and sometimes critique, but all while having fun,” Mr. Uraiqat said.
The governments of Iran, Israel and the United States have also turned to sarcasm but for very different ends, aiming to taunt their enemies. Sharing sometimes sinister jokes, they have embraced a style of trolling that often doubles as polished digital propaganda.
When President Trump, for example, demanded in early April that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s embassy in Zimbabwe fired back with a sarcastic jab: “We’ve lost the keys.”
During the Persian New Year, Israel’s foreign ministry shared a Persian-language post featuring a Whac-a-Mole-style graphic with the face of Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, popping up from one of the holes. “A game for the Nowruz holidays,” read the caption.
Mr. Khamenei’s father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the opening salvos of the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran. Israel then said it would kill anyone who succeeds him.
Unlike some Gulf countries now affected by conflict, Lebanon has been mired in years of turmoil. That includes an economic meltdown in 2019, the devastating Beirut port explosion in 2020, and two wars between Israel and Hezbollah, an Iranian ally, in the past three years.
“Lebanon’s repeated crises are almost like a laboratory for dark comedy,” Mr. Moumneh said.
One of Lebanon’s more unexpected cultural exports during this war has been popularity of the song “Badna Nroue” (“We Need to Calm Down”) by the popular Lebanese singer Haifa Wehbe.
The opening line — “We need to calm down. We need to settle down a bit and take it easy on each other” — has been widely used over videos urging all the main parties to the wars to cool tensions.
In Bahrain, an influencer pleaded with Mr. Trump to stop the war so people could get some sleep, saying, “I don’t like boom.”
In the United Arab Emirates, a clip from “Sex and the City 2,” in which the four friends abruptly leave Abu Dhabi after their host kicks them out, was widely shared after strikes from Iran prompted some residents and tourists to flee.
“People have taken difficult moments everywhere and turned them funny,” Toufic Braidi, a Lebanese digital creator, said in an interview from London. “In Dubai, it’s been about asking God to keep the Hermès stores and malls safe.”
In Syria, which has largely been spared by the wars all around its borders, people have poked fun at government safety instructions for missile strikes or falling debris. Comedians there, shaped by decades-long dictatorship and years of civil war, say they know too well how hardship becomes material.
“After all, tragedy plus time equals comedy,” said Mary Obaid, the co-founder of Styria — a portmanteau of Syria and hysteria — which describes itself as the country’s first comedy platform.
Not all jokes have gone down without consequence.
On March 7, Kuwait’s Interior Ministry said it had arrested three people after a video surfaced showing them “mocking the current situation in the country.” The clip appeared to be a satirical video showing the men, wearing helmets and holding makeshift weapons, crouching under a staircase and laughing as air-raid sirens sounded outside.
Mr. Moumneh, the Lebanese creator, said he sometimes received critical comments asking why he is making jokes during wartime. Some ask about his religion or sect in an effort to interpret his intent.
But as Lebanon and the region navigate a difficult moment, he does not want to stop, he said. Many tell him his videos offer them some respite.
“The real news is very difficult already,” he said one recent morning. “So why not make people cheerful, even if for a few seconds?”
Vivian Nereim contributed reporting from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
