This live-video essay was developed in the context of the 16th edition of the Tactics and Practice conference "Are you a Software Update?". The conference was organized by Aksioma, Institute for Contemporary Art and took place in Ljubljana on February 25th, 2025. The video is the outcome of a live streaming performance by Lesia Kulchynska and THE VOID. It follows an updated and extended version of the text.

The Lure of War

By Lesia Kulchynska

In January this year, Pakistan International Airlines published an advertisement meant to promote the resumption of their flights to Paris. It depicted the Eiffel Tower and a plane aiming at it. The Paris sky was overlaid by the colors of the French flag, with the red part of which ominously reminiscent of a stain of blood. The caption to the picture was “Paris, we’re coming today”.

The ad immediately provoked an outcry in social media. “Is this an advertisement or a threat?” someone wrote on X^[1].

Others claimed that the picture refers to the iconic image of the terrorist attack on NYC in 2001. The public anxiety was not based solely on the image. Pakistan indeed had some connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind of the attacks, was arrested in Pakistan in 2003. Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, was killed by U.S. forces also in Pakistan in 2011^[2].

Following the scandal, the Prime Minister of Pakistan has ordered an investigation of the case, which is now in progress.

So, was it an advertisement or a threat?  Or was it an advertisement of the threat?

I can’t really imagine what could be investigated here.  It is obvious that the producer of the image can not be held responsible for someone’s associations evoked by it. Yet, evoking associations is the essence of the advertising business.

Advertising of a threat

On July 7, 2024, the advertisement of the recruitment account “Privet Bot” (Ptivet means Hi in Russian) inviting the residents of European countries to join the fight against Ukraine’s Western allies was posted on the “Grey Zone”, now banned but then-time largest pro-Russian Telegram channel associated with the Wagner mercenary group^[3].  

Several video clips of different industrial fires were followed by the text describing different fire accidents allegedly in Romanian cities and attributing them first to the activity of some mysterious “Romanian friends who, the ad claims, said privet to us”, but then to the readers themselves: “You are the ones who boldly said PRIVET to us.  You are the ones the Western establishment is afraid of, printing one news article after another about you. They are afraid that there will be more of you. And there are more of you”. In this elusive language, saying “privet” is an euphemism for conducting pro-russias sabotage. Like in a dream or hallucination where the past and future merge, the text addresses the reader as someone who is already engaged in sabotage activity but at the same time not yet, and is invited to do it in the future:

We will help you and thank you. Just say PRIVET to us,” says the ads.

Gig-Economy of War

During the last year, several investigations have been published by Ukrainian and European media about people in Ukraine and in Europe who Russia recruited through Telegram and other online platforms to commit espionage, sabotage, arson, vandalism, and murder^[4]. The announcements are usually scattered among job offers, housing tips, and internet scams across channels frequented by refugee groups, or through the channels related to gambling or drugs, where people who are in need, in a vulnerable situation, in despair,  or in search of quick money can be easily tracked.

Here is an example from Estonia: the graffiti “Killnet hacked you” on the outer walls of a military complex that houses the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Center of Excellence was drawn by Latvian citizen Sergejs Hodonovič, then 21 years old. Sergejs met his client, nicknamed Green, while searching for weed on Telegram chats. Sergejs later was arresetd. According to his testimonies, he didn’t understand the meaning of the graffiti, nor did he know who his client was. He earned 400 euros for this task^[5].

The business is organized in such a way that there is a long chain of middlemen, which makes it difficult to attribute the recruitment to specific actors, and the people recruited don’t really know who they are working for and what operations they are involved in. Or, rather, they have an option not to be aware of who they are working on and what they are doing. This option is called plausible deniability.  Plausible deniability is a strategy widely used by Russia in the ongoing war. Literally, it means the possibility of denying your awareness and responsibility for something, very often based on the willful ignorance, or just the lack of evidence to confirm your intention behind the wrongdoing.

In the case of recruitment networks, this kind of plausible deniability of the individual involvement in war operations is enabled by the architecture of a labor process, standard to, what we call, gig-economy, –  an economic system, where people earn income by providing on-demand work, services, or goods, and are paid for each task.  It is the latest manifestation of automation of the labor process, which implies a dissolution of the production process into small tasks that can be performed by interchangeable workers who don’t see the complete cycle of production and don’t control the final product.  Marx called this phenomenon alienation, as workers are alienated from what they produce, labor becomes mechanical and meaningless. Gig economy is also characterized by the hyper-outsourced model, where workers are outsourced (because they are not employed by the company), maintenance costs are outsourced (because workers use their own devices, training is outsourced (workers are trained on their own), and fixed capital is outsourced^[6]. Its payment structures, which tie earnings to individual tasks, contribute to income instability and financial precarity. The lack of physical collocation contributes to the dissolution of a working collective^[7], and substituting it with the mass of atomized individuals coordinated through digital platforms.  

In case the gig economy converges with war, the war operations can be implemented as a set of discrete tasks by random atomized contractors. This kind of war operation can be performed in a foreign country without military violation of the border, and even without an organized group or at least a vaguely formed community of supporters of a certain military agenda. The basic resource that is needed (at least for the start of the operation) is a certain amount of precarious individuals.

So, unlike the classical proxy war model, where the operations are outsourced to organized paramilitary units, in this model of outsourced war the proxy is an atomized and automated individual who can participate in a military operation without making a decision to participate in this military operation. The war is being marketed as  “just a gig”, as a profitable deal. The very structure of this kind of employment offers you an option to be willfully ignorant of what you contribute to.  

Images of the Future

But even in the case of more explicit recruitment, as on the Grey Zone channel, which is obviously militaristic, the message is still constructed according to the plausible deniability logic, which perfectly matches the elusive aesthetics of advertising.

Let’s look once again at the Privet bot ads. It is structured as fake. According to the Ukrinform investigation, the inscriptions of the images were all false.  The videos used as proof of pro-Russian sabotage in Romania in fact depicted earlier accidents of different origins and in different places^[8].  This is an interesting military strategy: by simply claiming that any random trouble is a part of your special operation, you build your threatening image for almost no cost. In a way, it is a radical application of a hyper-outsourced model typical to the gig-economy.  It is also a very comfortable way of profiting from something without taking responsibility for it, simply because it doesn’t exist.

The menacing collectivity the ads refer to is also fake, of course, because there is no collective subject behind those unrelated fires.  Yet, even if this collectivity doesn’t exist, YOU, the reader, are addressed as if you already belong to it; you are addressed as an agent of violence.

“The collective realm is imaginary in advertising, but its virtual consumption suffices to ensure serial conditioning”^[9], wrote Jean Baudrillard in the “System of Objects”,  describing the advertising strategy of solicitation based on what he calls “the presumption of collectivity”. Which means that ads typically strive to provoke our desire for some product by referring to an imaginary collectivity of people who already desire it. Like in this ad for cigarette brand #6^[10] from 1975: “People like you are changing to #6”, it claims.  It also addresses you as if you already belong to the community of  #6 consumers.

For this ad to work, it doesn’t matter that those people don’t exist, that they are not like you; and that people like you are not changing to #6.  What matters is your desire to belong, to be like others.

For the advertising to work, it doesn’t matter that the image of the community it ascribes you to is fictional and doesn’t have a referent in reality. Quite on the contrary, the task of the advertisement is to evoke a desire, which, as we know, thrives when there is a lack. That is why the advertisement sign doesn’t refer to what exists, it draws attention to what is absent: “The image creates a void, indicates an absence, and it is in this respect that it is ‘evocative’”^[11], Baudrillard claimed. The advertising shows you something fictional and tries to evoke your desire to make it real in the future.   Its images don’t represent what’s already there, they strive to shape what will come. These are images of the future.

Addressing the impact of networked communication on democracy, political theorist and media scholar Jodi Dean claims that the logic of advertisement inherent to digital media became defining also for present-day political and communication strategies.  She introduces the concept of communicative capitalism to conceptualize the commodification of communication inherent to the very architecture of digital communication technologies. Indeed, in 2023, the companies with the largest share of digital advertising revenue worldwide were Google (39%), Facebook (18%),  Amazon (7%), and TikTok (3%).  Alphabet, the company owner of  YouTube and Google, generated $238 billion in revenue from its advertising segment in 2023, which was 77 percent of Alphabet’s overall revenue that year, and it is expected to grow^[12].  Algorithmically based targeted advertisement, the most profitable business in present-day capitalism, defines the architecture of the information field and communication today.

While calling something a fake, we imply the concept of “fact” as its counterpart. Fact is something finished, something belonging to the past, and fake is a falsified past, we assume. We still tend to perceive information as a domain of facts and, therefore, a domain of the past. Yet, the temporality structure of the present-day information space, heavily defined by the AdTech and MarTech^[13], seems to be starting to shift. What we call fakes are the symptoms of such a shift; they are mutations of the information field induced by the advertising purpose of future-making. Although shaped as facts, fakes have a structure of advertisements: they play with the aesthetics of factuality only to sell us the fiction as already defined reality. They are aimed not at our knowledge about the past but at our imagination about the future.

This photoshopped image of fires in Donetsk was posted by the local Donetsk news website on May  26, 2014, a day when the Russians took over the Donetsk airport, causing the first heavy fights in the city; but there were no such fires at that day. The conflagration, very similar to the one in the photoshopped picture, erupted in Donetsk later when Russians caused explosions in the Donetsk chemical plant.  The image of fire came before the fire itself. By the simulation principle, the image of an event is a modeling of it.

Memetic Violence

“Images circulate more easily than words. When interpretation is too hard, when making an argument takes too long, little images are ready stand-ins”^[14], wrote Jodi Dean reflecting on the viral circulation of images on the internet. Images can convey emotions or desires without being precise about them.

The more elusive the advertisement image is, the more people can project on it their own desires. According to Judith Williamson, the ad doesn’t create a meaning, it offers you a hollow sign and invites you to give a meaning to it^[15]. The ad addresses each receiver individually and at the same time as a part of the group of consumers; the trick is to let each receiver give their own meaning to this imaginary group.

According to Henry Jenkins, the more open the meme is to different meanings, the more spreadable it is^[16]. Elusiveness is a key to spreadability.

It is not by chance that one of the most circulated memes in history is the so-called “Disaster Girl” meme, featuring a smiling girl who probably just burned someone’s house. While the reasons behind your problems might be complex and hard to grasp, the Disaster Girl meme can convey how you feel about them, offering also an emotional release by acknowledging your dark side; by admitting that, yes, sometimes we want it all burn to ashes.  

There are many reasons why the fantasy of disaster is so appealing. One of them is a frustrated craving for a change, a feeling of impotence, inability to handle the disappointing conditions of your existence. It could also be just an exhaustion.

As one Ukrainian comedian said, Ukrainians are not afraid of nuclear bombing because we are too tired. Yes, sometimes we even dream about it. We plan to have a nationwide orgy in case of a nuclear bombing.

There are no fewer reasons why the image of violence is appealing. Everyone can invest their own frustration and resentment in the image of a sinister little girl who’s just burned whatever was bothering her.

It is not by chance, the Telegram channels recruiting people for making arsons use the variation of disaster girl meme to advertise the job^[17].  The job they advertise is exactly the reproduction of this meme; yet in reality. The invitation is to embrace your rage and get paid for it.

Yet, the most important part of the job is to produce an image of the harm you inflict. The recruited firebugs say that curators make it clear that the content is a priority. For the car arson gigs in Ukraine, for example, they sometimes suggest the contractors take an already burned-out car, burn it again, and film it.  The material damage is not the main aim of the sabotage. Be it a car arson, a vandalizing monument, a pro-Russian graffiti, the main aim is to create media content.  The job is to produce an image of violence, while the violence becomes an image-production tool. In this creepy loop, the image production and production of violence coincide. Content creators are violence-makers.

Ernest Dichter, director of the Institute for Motivational Research, said that the task of the ad is to give permission to the desires that you would tend to feel awkward about. “The problem confronting us now is how to allow the average American to feel moral even when he is flirting, even when he is spending money, even when he is buying a second or third car”^[18], he wrote back in the fifties. The way to give permission is, again, through the presumption of collectivity: if you can imagine other people doing this, then you are more ready to do it too.

Atomized gig-workers are hired to scatter the signs of violence across the media field to stage the presence of a violent collectivity in the given society and therefore give permission for the desire for violence, encourage passage a’lact, a passage to action. Everyone can invest their own meaning and aspirations into this spectacle of the violent collectivity; everyone is invited to fantasize of being a part of a preferable imaginary group. The aim of this campaign is to incline you to unleash your anger so it can be used as a military resource. It seduces you with the images of violence and a loom of collective action, and eventually sells you the war. As soon as there is a sufficient number of angry customers in a given society, there is a potential for a new booming market for the war industry.

That’s exactly what happened in Donbas in 2014, when the anger of people frustrated with their precarious lives, was used by Russia to fuel the inception of war. It all started with fake images of future violence and tempting gigs: first, handling flyers, then taking part in the seizure of governmental institutions, then organizing the referendum for separation from Ukraine. After the referendums, Russian-managed paramilitary structures became the main employment option in the region.

Pain sales

We used to think of pain as a resource for a revolution: once there is a critical mass of outrage and discontent in society, there is a chance of a change, we tend to believe. Yet, according to neuromarketing guru, David Sandler (who is extremely popular in Russia, by the way), pain is a marketing goldmine.  According to Sandler, in order to sell something, you don’t need to explain the benefits of it, you just need to locate the pain of your leads, remind them about it, or better enhance it, and convince them that you can eliminate it^[19]. During the so-called Russian Spring in Donbas and Crimea, the Russian military intervention was advertised as a solution to all the social pains in the region. The revolutionary desire for a change was hacked to fuel the war. For the people in Ukraine it turned into a nightmare, yet it became a perfect solution to Putin’s own pain of political upheavals in his country.  

The biggest anti-Putin protests in Russia happened in 2012-2013,  just before the Russian invasion of Crimea and Donbas. Once the “special operation” started in Ukraine, the problem of internal conflict was solved: the opposition was smashed and its supporters muted.  “We see the tragedy of Ukraine, where the fratricidal war in Donbass began with the “Maidan”, street demonstrations and riots”^[20], states the “Anti-Maidan Manifesto”.  “Anti-Maidan” movement was founded in Russia in 2015 by the head of the biker club “Night Wolves” Alexander Zaldostanov, member of the Federation Council Dmitry Sablin and mixed martial arts fighter Julia Berezikova to fight with violence any protest attempts in the country. At the press conference called  “Challenges of our time: revolutions, illegal actions; how to protect your country from collapse“, the purpose of the movement was announced: “to counter illegal attempts to overthrow the current government in the manner of Ukrainian Euromaidan”^[21]. “The Tragedy of Ukraine”, delivered by the Russian war, became the final and decisive argument against any revolutionary attempts to overthrow the government in Russia. The war on Ukraine was offered to the Russian citizens as an ultimate answer to all their social and political discontent expressed massively during the protests. The rage of the citizens, caused by the Putin regime, was repurposed on Ukraine and “the West”, while the regime got unlimited power.

Now, in the article on the russian sabotage in Western countries,  published on January 2025, The New York Times claims, quoting Richard Haass, that “Russia has turned into a revolutionary actor”^[22]. That’s the image it strives to promote with its sabotage advertising campaign. Russia enters today the global gig market, offering citizens of European countries to exchange their pain for a quick profit. Buying up the rage of the atomized individuals and employing digital platforms to aggregate and coordinate them as its military operatives, it parasitizes on their revolutionary energy, using it as a fuel for its war machine.  All this is just to protect one miserable guy and the bunch of his deeply depressed henchmen from their most terrifying pain of losing power.

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