"As travel vloggers go, South African Kurt Caz has never exactly trafficked in highbrow content. His career as an influencer began about six years ago, through YouTube videos with simple but effective titles like "What is Bologna, Italy Like?" But as Caz got more travel time under his belt, his videos quickly devolved into the exploitative fare typical of most poverty vloggers: "Don't Visit This Egyptian Ghetto!" and "Avoiding Guerillas on Peru's Deadliest Road" became the new blueprint, while his views ballooned into the millions."
"The influencer spouts off some obnoxious missives about crime and immigration, referring to non-white people running errands as "interesting characters." What is remarkable is the video's thumbnail, which shows Caz walking down a street flanked by storefronts with signage in Arabic script. A man passing by on a bike is also shown clad in a black balaclava, mean mugging Caz as he films."
Kurt Caz launched a YouTube travel channel with straightforward city videos. Over time content shifted toward exploitative poverty vlogs and sensationalized danger narratives, driving millions of views. The channel later embraced overtly racist shock tactics and incorporated generative AI to alter imagery. In a London-focused video Caz presented Croydon as threatening while using a thumbnail showing Arabic-script signage and a balaclava-clad cyclist. Verification revealed the signs were English and the cyclist was smiling, indicating image manipulation. The altered visuals amplified stereotypes about crime and immigration and acted as dogwhistles to audiences prone to xenophobic confirmation.
Read at Futurism
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