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this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2026
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The top “you buy, we fry” chicken spot sells their own house made Dubai chocolate. Fucking fire.
But also, fuck Dubai. Not sure how this food is propaganda. Just don’t give money that supports the regime?
it serves the same purpose as quirky 4chan screenshots: attempts to soften the image of a horrible place.
Does it really though? This sounds a lot like when people assign meaning to things that are simply as they appear. 9/10 people in the US don’t care about Dubai to begin with, let alone the slavery and other human rights abuses. They may have seen the vapid influencers that show off penthouse suites at staggering heights, or the $10k+ plane tickets, and go “alrighty then, anyways”.
I think that is the whole point: To keep the image of Dubai up as the land of luxury. If Dubai is just some place where the world's favorite influencers party, then an indifferent foreigner isn't going to look closer for any human rights problems, etc. "Sure, I've heard of Dubai. They make chocolate, right?" is better for the rulers than "Sure, I've heard of Dubai. They still have slaves, right?".
Put another way: If most of the world doesn't care about Dubai, then people are only going to know what the current culture tells them about it. Chocolate and Lamborghinis is a simpler story to keep in the culture than human rights abuses.
I mean Fresno, CA is the home of the US pistachio something something. I think they grow a lot of pistachios there maybe. I call it Fresno chocolate because fuck Dubai.
I can reserve my "fuck Fresno" for better occasions. It's nowhere near as big as my "fuck Dubai" or "fuck Lodi"
I see your point. I still doubt that Dubai chocolate has given Dubai a positive image on the world stage.
The coverage of their use of slaves to build the stadiums for the World Cup was pretty wide, and yet very few boycotted the games or FIFA for paying the slavers.
Though I suppose that may prove your point. I just don’t see how something that most people don’t even know about is some propaganda campaign.
Have you ever heard of soft power? Countries like the US, China, and Russia, even Thailand from what I know, engage in these deliberate propaganda campaigns. It's like the only reason they keep the Olympics around when it's such a money drain. It's also why Hollywood has gotten so much funding from the US government over the decades.
The UAE doesn't have to sit in a room and explicitly plan it out when they can just pay hundreds of influencers to do the work for them. You're not meant to notice that it subtly normalizes and legitimizes the country in the world stage.
Not saying that it necessarily is, just that its roots seem kinda shady