Comedy wins in #Aras25 content battle

This is the second instalment of a mini-series for the week that's in it; Notable Content for #Aras25. Yesterday we looked at the FG attack video.

Today I give you; "Irish woman who is absolutely not sorry", an Instagram reel and TikTok by comedian, storyteller and poet Aoife Dunne.

Bear with me.

A bit of background if you don't know Aoife Dunne

Aoife's very funny, relatable sketches have been going viral across Instagram and TikTok for a while; think "when you have limited Irish but need to gossip on holidays".

She mixes in political content too, her themes often cover the US military use of Shannon, animal cruelty or Conor McGregor-esque toxicity, in a way that travels on the platform and doesn't feel out of place with her more purely funny stuff.

Her content often crosses the 500k views mark. Here is a snapshot of some recent reels:

One of her most popular videos (2m views on Instagram alone) is called "Irish woman with absolutely nothing to apologise for"; a montage of what the caption descries as "Irish woman apologising for existing by whispering sweet sorry every time you discover they exist".

It is very bloody funny.

The video

Her follow up is one of the most subtly and devastatingly brilliant pieces of political content I have ever seen.

"Irish woman who is absolutely not sorry" has a montage of Aoife barging into situations - telling someone to put earphones in, giving someone back their litter, skipping the queue - all while saying "sorry now" in a way that is so viscerally familiar.

Then right in the middle of it is Aoife standing on a street corner pointing to a Heather Humphrey's poster and with an almost eye roll comes the line - "sorry now".

It is about 3 seconds long.

And it is withering.

And it has reached about 1.2 million people across Instagram and TikTok in the last 2 weeks.

This is what can happen when progressives aren't infighting

This is just a snap shot of the kind of cacophony that has been built online, by content creators native to the platforms, aligned around the Catherine Connolly campaign. (See also Aoife's send off of the debates, with over 1m views between Instagram and TikTok)

It is also what the post-political ad political internet will look like; the narrative will belong to those who can make us laugh or angry, with whom we build para-social relationships, who can keep us hanging on past those first few seconds.

Irish politicians have not been great at capturing the zeitgeist or being culturally relevant, in ways that you see with, for example, the Democrats in the US, or Corbyn-era Labour. The only time we have really seen this here is in the big ticket referenda.

My theory on this is that our fractured political left - the range of parties and, frankly, their disdain for each other - makes it hard for progressive influencers to find a way in, to find someone to back that won't lead to them being attacked by people who are fundamentally aligned but from a different tribe.

This time seems to be different, and I believe that the binary choice - unity on the left - has made this possible.

If progressive forces want to continue winning the internet, this is something to seriously consider.