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Hyper Viralities 
From The Abrahamic Afterlife: 

A Bleak Zeitgeist 
about the 
Dubai Chocolate 
Phenomenon



In 1994, a group of men were in line for the opening of the first McDonald’s at Al Ghurair Centre, Deira, in the Emirate of Dubai. A dear friend of mine, in 2012-2013, told me about how he was there. He was perhaps 34 when he told me, so about 11 when he visited. It wasn’t that burgers and french fries were not known to these bellies; it was the symbolism of this global fast-food brand arriving to ‘here’. 
Where is here?





The first McDonals in the UAE at Al Ghurair Centre in Dubai, 1994 . McD


Prepping the taste buds for McDonald’s came via Americana, the Middle East’s largest integrated food company. First established in 1960s Kuwait, the company introduced the Arabian region to processed foods such as chicken nuggets, hamburgers, chicken fillets, and other frozen, quickly prepped food items. Today, it is a conglomerate and local representative of fastfood brands such as KFC, Pizza Hut, Hardee's, T.G.I. Friday's, Costa Coffee, Baskin Robbins, Krispy Kreme, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and LongHorn Steakhouse. These entities are represented not only in the Gulf region but also in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Kazakhstan. 

Diet and gastronomy in the Arab Gulf region have radicalized since the 1990s, and the consumption of oily, fatty, saturated foods signals lifestyles of conspicuous consumption as aspirational to global capitalism and a frenzied eagerness to join the world of hyperexcess and economic freedom.  

Yet, I speculate on something metaphysical--a manifestation of intergenerational mythology and textual heritage:  



The coming of excess, abundance, and hedonism in Arabia as foretold in Islamic eschatology.






Being the same landscape that birthed Islam, the ‘scarcity’ of the Arabian Peninsula’s environment is foundational to local philosophy and intellectual life. Contemporary understanding of the place as of ‘excess’ and ‘artifice’ is ascribed mainly because it is preceded by conditions of poverty and nothingness. With scant resources, intense wildlife competition, saline water, and poisonous critters, speculating about the coming of greater goods was the promise that Allah would compensate believers who persevered and learned to live spiritually in abundance, transcending their desertified condition. The Prophet Muhammad’s teachings instructed that living in harmony with one another and hailing abundance within the Peninsula’s terrain were ways to establish a connection with the Almighty. More than Arab or human genius, Islam is a landscape genius. 



Even before the Prophet Muhammad, Alsaee, a ritual of the Hajj, re-enacts the ritual of Sayidda Hajar, Abraham’s second wife, when she was left near what is today Makkah al-Mukarramah with a newborn infant, Gabriel. After many hours in the heat, Hajar becomes desperate for water, both for herself and the to-be saint. In her confusion and daze, she begins to pace between the hills of Safa and Marwa, asking for and wishing for water. This practice of rain-hailing through displays of perseverance rewards her with an aquifer springing with freshwater – the Zamzam well. The moral of the narrative is that perseverance has godly rewards. 





In the Islamic sunna, Abu Hurayrah speaks of the Prophet Muhammad saying: 
“The Hour will not commence before wealth becomes abundant and overflowing, to the point that a man brings out the charity due on his wealth and cannot find anyone to accept it from him, and to the point that Arabia’s lands will revert back to being meadows and rivers.”






With vast oil wealth, came the rush to terraform the region into a green and aqua space. Greenification mythology and techno-optimism govern construction trends, with an urgent abandonment and reversal of the condition experienced by ancestors. From mangrove seedlings to palm groves to high-intensity desalination plants to irrigation pipelines, much has been built to leap beyond land-based ancestral lifestyles and seasonal cycles. 



While all these development projects operate under the guise of cost-benefit analysis and support the claim that engineering technology is the path forward, much of the region’s development and intellectual trends point to the fact that the meadows and rivers the Prophet speaks of are collectively manifesting in our realities and in city planning. 




It signals not the rise of individualism and a neoliberal world order, but the simulation and manifestation of Godly messages. Arabia in the Prophet’s eyes is dry and desolate, yet it will become verdant; while Arabia may be poor and scarce, it will become rich and oversatiated. 

Superconsumption and hyperdevelopmental lifestyles unfold from these transhistorical, intertextual, and place-specific deposits. Today, the region looks like a weird recreation and transposition of Abrahamic Arabia, rather than from the legacy of imperial Islam and Arabism. It is phantasmagoria, fueled not by logic and enterprise, but myth and allegory. 

This sprouting of green-ness, from this ‘hypo-textual’ location underpinned by commodity fetishism, is epitomized by the viral brat-green Dubai Chocolate sensation. 




Paralleling the ‘cargo cult’ phenomenon, a term which originated during the encounter of First Nation communities with sights of mass industry, transport vehicles, weaponry, packaged foods, attire, and other apparatuses, at the dawn of European, American and Japanese imperialism in the Pacific during the 20th century, and how it signalled the coming of a prophet or a deity,  it's not impossible to ascribe the velvety chocolate as less about capital and more of a totem.





Today, a racist and problematic term, there is resonance, however, for how cargo cult can also manifest as products appearing as modern, secular, and in a condition of ‘capitalist bliss’. I believe that cultish practices around cargo materials are much more common than this relegation and ghettoization of it as a ‘primal’ reaction and ‘uninitiated’ response mechanism. Expressions of how we deify cargo and material matter are abundant and not infrequent.  

Rather, it is symptomatic of how the rise of a local brand to global cult status is not just a market event; it is a narrative of cultural affirmation, a story of the local triumphing on a global stage, and a testament to the region’s, and especially Dubai, perfecting the model of ‘here-ness’ as not local specific, but as slop — not as digital but infrastructural. Life and the environment are a backdrop; everything is in drag, so play it up, dish it out. 




Goods, like the Chocolate, are byproducts of our exocapital world and, as part of the last century’s secularization of knowledge, hyper-individualism, and economic utopianism. But really, it attests to how contemporary culture is in crisis over a need for the sacred amid market and consumable saturation. 

Appearing as protiferols, ice-cream flavours, fillings, cheesecakes, chocolate bars, and more, could it actually be the devil? Does the chocolate not call on you to be less about the local and more about the experiential: you are floating on emphatamines beyond the surface of this universe, being swallowed and birthed by it. With all this overstimulated phantasma, where are you actually? Have you broken through the matrix? Islam, and its message of Enlightenment, calls on us to look for the immaterial through the material world. 

The self-made chocolatier represents the contemporary ethos of ‘making it’; the self-aggrandizing philosophy of ‘starting from the bottom and now we're here’. The ‘here’ reveals a wider cultural crisis about place and placemaking. 


Where is here?






What makes the chocolate about Dubai, when none of its ingredients are actually from Dubai? 

 Pistachios are the main ingredient of the viral chocolate and it is sourced from regions with ancient agricultural histories, often with complex geopolitical ties to Dubai and the broader Arabian Gulf region, namely Iran. In California, for decades, Zionist companies like The Wonderful Company have been overflowing the market with pistachios, mostly to ensure that Iran does not dominate global supply. 

Meanwhile, kataifi and tahini, the other main ingredients of Levantine and Mediterranean cuisine, are deeply rooted in the region's cultural heritage, yet they are not specific to Dubai and have long histories of production and trade. This disconnect reveals a crucial point: the "authenticity" of the chocolate lies not in the geographical origin of its ingredients, but in the performance of its assembly and branding. The chocolate is "of Dubai" not because it's grown there, but because it is curated, branded, and made to go viral there.

Historically, the Arabian Peninsula was not a major agricultural hub. Rather, the region's indigenous plant, the date palm, was a symbol of resilience and survival. The Arab Agricultural Revolution, a period where Islamic agronomists in other parts of the world (like al-Andalus) mastered irrigation techniques and introduced crops from other regions (e.g., rice, cotton, citrus from India and China), provides a powerful parallel to Dubai and this greater Gulf spectre of continual and intensive development in landscape reconfiguration and hybridization. 

Just as ancient Islamic scholars perfected the art of adapting and integrating foreign crops into new environments, the conception of space and industry in Dubai, alongside the free-zone clustered development structures across the region, has perfected an urbanity around importing, assembling, and branding foreign products into a new, globally coveted form. It is a place that transforms raw, imported "cargo" into an experience of capitalist bliss.




Bodak Yellow, Cardi B’s single to stardom, capitalized on the city as a backdrop and the brand of the city has now become about hustle and ‘making it’ culture, as it is tied to Dubai and broader Khaleeji kitsch-lux culture. Additionally, podcasts and other interviews reveal how sexworkers and female influencers are lured to the city by men who pay for skatapholic fantasies, see #Dubaiportapotty (1), or how Uzbeki and Chinese Muslim women can move and become a second wife to Khaleeji man, are all results of the “going viral” influencer trends, who need to move to this location that is a non-location known as Dubai. This marketing slogan and narrative of “get wealthy” in this “location” results in horrific abuses.

What many of these trends point to is that when an influencer, personal trainer, or digital media personality moves to Dubai, they are not just changing locations; they are performing the ritual of placing themselves in a location believed to have the magical properties to generate "cargo"—in this case, followers, brand deals, and wealth. Their success is a form of sympathetic magic; by being physically present in Dubai, they hope to become viral and abundant, paralleling the hailing of historic claims and legends.  

Influencers in Dubai adopt the aesthetic, tone, and lifestyle of global luxury influencers, but they have to do so within the specific, hyper-real backdrop of Dubai's urban environment. Their content often focuses on "unboxing" luxury goods, showcasing expensive experiences, or offering advice on achieving a similar lifestyle. This is a digital-age version of building a mock temple of commodity fetishism—they are performing the rituals of abundance in a digital space, believing that this performance will bring the real "cargo" of wealth and fame.


For many, the "cargo" is not just the products they receive but the virality itself. The number of likes, shares, and followers—the digital metrics of success. These metrics, which lead to lucrative brand deals and a higher standard of living, are the real "cargo" that influencers are trying to summon. Dubai, in this context, is the perfect location for this ritual, a place where the infrastructure for virality (high-speed internet, glamorous backdrops, other influencers) is already in place. Through a specialized permit-and-visa system for influencers, the Emirate actively manages and monetizes this phenomenon. It has effectively positioned itself as the gateway of this digital cargo cult, regulating the flow of viral content and ensuring that it benefits the city's brand and economy.

The accidental glut, the postnatural found-object assemblage, and the spawn of this landscape-cargo-virality metamorphosis of the city are, in essence, the phenomenon of Dubai Chocolate. It is a testament to the fact that virality is the new currency of cultural significance, where signalling in an increasingly interconnected and class-conscious world, people use products to signal their social position or their desired position. The frenzy over Dubai Chocolate wasn't about its nutritional value or even its taste in a traditional sense; it was about the social currency of being one of the first to have it, to post about it, and to be "in the know." 

Its scarcity and high price transformed it from a snack into a trophy.

The chocolate’s success is based on this phenomenonology of scarcity in the landscape of the Arabian Peninsula. The creator Fix Dessert Chocolatier, who is Dubai-based, produced the bars in small batches, initially making only around 500 bars a day. The products were not widely distributed in supermarkets but were available through a specific delivery app in the UAE and only at limited times. This created an immediate "scarcity effect." Meanwhile, well-known influencers such as Maria Vehera began generating ASMR videos of the chocolate crack with green filling, which were shared globally, leaving many unable to buy it. This limited availability then fueled a black market for the creation and distribution of ‘counterfeit’ Dubai Chocolate, turning it into a completely unhinged, dislocated product that anyone can reproduce.

What is interesting about this form of virality is that it has created a new disruption in that the non-author, the no-brand, the non-place, the no-context, as a new form of commodity circulation, where everyone is making a knock-off of something that isn’t originally there, or ‘here’ anyway. 

Dubai Chocolate shows how the culture of pirating and copyism has become mainstream. The concept provided an entry point for every small baker, coffee shop in an isolated town or province, to make its own version of this viral trend. 






The global frenzy over Dubai Chocolate says as much about the world's perception of Dubai as it does about the city itself. The world's vision is not of a complex, multicultural, highly geopolitical city, but rather a symbol of ultimate cargo served from the afterlife of the Abrahamic world. Many people are fighting over it. 

The city is the main product being consumed; we are unsure this is hell or heaven, or its precipice. 
The chocolate is just a small, viral fragment of this larger narrative. The world looks to Dubai as a model of what can be achieved through sheer ambition and a strategic understanding of modern consumer desires, reinforcing the idea of a global cargo cult in which the city itself is the totem of unparalleled wealth and success.

The impulse is not just to be authentic but to be a highly refined and idealized version of yourself, one that is perfectly aligned with a desired narrative. It is also most comical that this represents trends in the motives of cultural immigration to cities like New York, Amsterdam, Berlin, or Tokyo. Yet, in Dubai, it is perceived as artificial, yet somehow natural in other places. 

This reductive story of transforming a desert into a global hub of luxury is more compelling than the raw facts of its multifaceted realities. The collective impulse is to buy into the more powerful story, to consume the hyperreal narrative rather than the complex reality. This is banked on and desensitized from. 

The impulse to move ‘here’ is to live with no accountability in your pursuit to achieve significance—to be viral, to be a brand, to be "more than" a person. This is why influencers, personal trainers, and other digital personalities come to Dubai. They are not just seeking to be themselves; they are seeking to become a version of themselves that is amplified, globally recognized, and financially successful. This desire is a blend of entrepreneurial drive, personal ambition, and an understanding that visibility in the digital age is a form of power.

This shift from authenticity to post-authenticity represents a fundamental change in our values. It suggests that contemporary society is less concerned with the "real" in a traditional sense and more captivated by the spectacular, the curated, and the aspirational. 

We no longer just want to be "true to ourselves"; we want to be a better, more powerful version of ourselves that can captivate a global audience.

Popular critical cultural practice today self-perceives this change in norms as a result of the broken, unequal and displaced culture we live in. It is common today to hear artists, curators, thinkers, designers, activists, and academics calling for a return to intergenerational wisdom, for being earth-embedded, and for listening to planetary logics -- to escape our narcissism, vanity, and sense of self-destruction. Yet, in this same intergenerational wisdom, they also foretell that some of our futures are defined by complete rupture and discord with what is seen as static and stable cultural norms and habits. Have our ancestors, mythos and prophets really spoken to us about elastic, timeless, and place-specific wisdoms and eternal truths? Or have they spoken to us about catastrophic floods, partition, and total collapse?

Perhaps this embrace of the non-specific, non-native, the completely abandoned, sliced, cut up, sprinkles of cargo from another world, from Islam or others, is the world we, or maybe I, as of here, from here, visualize and create. The Hour that Abu Hurayrah warns us of, how we signal our self-extinction, is or maybe even has commenced.   
  







(1) Celina Runako , Boss of degrading sex-trade ring in Dubai's glamour districts unmasked by BBC, 2025. BBC
Images and videos 
generated with Midjourney
collaged footage from TikTok: mariavehera257, tasha_tries_it, 
the pizza pedler, AR I Londong Content Creator, Sumaq Iraqi Charcoal, Mofries_nola, Nostalgia, Mukjji,sophieshophss,nofglobal, valeria, AndreasHØ / and Instagram: ahaadalamoudi by Ahmad Makia

self-published/edited
2026
multi-mediated/desktop publishing by
Lars Oschmann