Military Thirst Traps / Thirst Trap Propaganda

About

Military Thirst Traps or Thirst Trap Propaganda refers to social media posts made by a military or people serving in that military that use physically attractive soldiers in social media posts, which many theorize are done for propaganda purposes. These posts, often called a "psyop," have been accused of attempts to portray positive publicity or as recruitment tools. Prominent examples have included posts associated with the U.S., Israeli and Spanish militaries, among many others. In the early 2020s, so-called "thirst trap propaganda" proliferated on TikTok, leading to discourse online. Particularly viral examples of this in the early 2020s include Lunchbaglujan and Dancing IDF Soldier TikToks.

Origin

The use of physically attractive people as a propaganda tool for militaries predates the internet. Militaries usually recruit young people, whose bodies have frequently been used in posters, television shows and paintings to promote themselves, garner support or encourage recruitment throughout history. A thirst trap is a provocative photo posted to social media that is intended to arouse and titillate, and the earliest online uses of this term date back to around 2011.

Posts on X / Twitter show discussion about "thirst trap" selfies taken by men and women enlisted in the military dating back to at least the early 2010s, but these thirst traps do not appear to have been associated with the military in any official capacity and were uploaded by individual users themselves.

Early examples of the expression include a post from X user @badgalarii in which she expressed disgust about a military thirst trap on July 4th, 2019 (seen below, left), though it did not gain notable engagement.^[12] In fact, rules about "honoring the uniform" seem to have led many, like @Saylor_Nicole13 posting (seen below, right) on X on August 13th, 2020, to regard these thirst traps as obscene.^[11]

Other kinds of non-social media propaganda, such as the 2017 Thai television series Love Missions, were accused of being "thirst traps" as well.^[3]

Starting around late 2020, posters started discussing TikToks that featured conventionally attractive soldiers and appeared to endorse the militaries they served. A May 2021 Rolling Stone article examined the phenomenon, focusing on Israeli Defense Forces influencer Natalia Fadeev, also known as gunwaifu on TikTok.^[1]

Fadeev's posting includes straightforward thirst traps in uniform like the post (seen below, left) from September 16th, 2021, which received nearly 100,000 views over the course of two years.^[4] Fadeev, like many other users who've been labeled "thirst trap propagandists" by people online, also pushes back against commenters who say she's not a real soldier. For example, she posted one such video on October 10th, 2023, (seen below, right) that received almost 80,000 views in nine days.^[5]

Other notable early examples of things people have attributed to "thirst trap propaganda" included two viral moments from 2020, one involving a video showing graduates of an Egyptian police academy posing shirtless (seen below, left) and the other involving Spanish police officers in 2020 (seen below, right). The Egyptian video, posted to X by user @bassem__saad on October 17th, 2020, received over 11,500 likes in three years.^[9]

The Spanish police in their deep V-necks were at first praised by some liberal commentators on X and elsewhere before people learned that the force they belonged to, La Legión, was deeply loyal to former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and infamous for committing atrocities during the Spanish Civil War.

Spread

One of the most prominent and viral examples many attributed to "thirst trap propaganda" trended online in early 2022. Haylee Lujan, a psychological operations specialist in the United States Army, posted a variety of TikToks under the username Lunchbaglujan.^[2] In the TikTok (seen below, left) posted on September 19th, 2022, which received almost 700,000 likes in the course of a year, Lujan shared "daily affirmations."^[6] In the TikTok (seen below, right) posted on January 28th, 2023, Lujan earned over 400,000 likes with a caption reading, "propaganda this propaganda that let me take a propa ganda at them yitties" in response to the discourse surrounding her.^[7]

Others in 2022 commented on increasing amounts of thirst trap content posted by Ukrainian soldiers on TikTok during the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. For example, TikToker @supernovae posted a compilation of what they termed "Ukrainian thirst traps" on April 15th, 2022, earning over 4,000 likes in the course of a year and multiple prominent reposts.^[8]

On October 10th, 2023, amid the escalating 2023 war between Hamas and Israel, Israeli military influencer @taliaaviv_ posted a video of herself at a shooting range that spurred discussion surrounding the topic. X user @kirawontmiss labeled it as "thirst trap propaganda" and accused the influencer of missing every shot (seen below, left), receiving over 192,000 likes in the course of a week on October 12th.^[13] Meanwhile, in regard to the same post, @stringbean670 observed that the bookmarks on it outnumbered the likes (seen below, right).^[14]

Related Memes

U.S. Army E-Girl / Lunchbaglujan

Lunchbaglujan, commonly referred to as the U.S. Army E-girl, is an e-girl and a U.S. Army specialist who gained popularity on TikTok, 4chan and Twitter in late September 2022. Lunchbaglujan has described herself as a "psychological operations specialist" for the U.S. Army, which led to memes about Lujan herself possibly being a post-ironic psyop meant to recruit more people into the army.

Dancing IDF Soldier TikToks

Dancing IDF Soldier TikToks, also known as Israeli Defense Forces Thirst Traps, refers to various social media content posted by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) or soldiers serving in it which depicts physically attractive soldiers dancing to TikTok songs, usually women. After appearing in the early 2020s and garnering attention online, many social media users began calling the content "thirst trap propaganda," criticizing both the Israeli military and fans of the content for supporting violence and perceivably using attractive people and social media for propaganda purposes.

Search Interest

Various Examples

External References