Everyone including the Delhi police has jumped on the ‘moye moye’ craze that has taken over Instagram reels and social media. But as it reaches a fever pitch in reel-verse, this trend, which has its roots in a Serbian song on despair, is becoming a mockery of disabled people.
In a reel, one person is seen complimenting another, with a cursor indicating him as Shah Jahan, for building the Taj Mahal. But the ‘King’ points to a labourer who worked on the monument. The person goes to shake hands with the worker but it turns out he doesn’t have hands. And right on cue, everyone except the handless labourer starts dancing to ‘moye moye’ playing in the backdrop.
The dark joke mocking a disabled man has over 17 million views and a million ‘likes’. A chunk of humanity online is voraciously consuming disability jokes with not an ounce of protest.
The ‘Moye moye’ trend originated on TikTok. It was carried forward by TikTokers mocking users for their cringy storylines. By the time the trend made its way into India on Instagram, it became a way to mock sentimental plots such as breakups or unfulfilled aspirations in general—also considered cringe.
‘Moye moye’ became a humourous way to deal with disappointment or sorrow—whether it was India’s loss at the 2023 World Cup finals or a reaction to parents’ trite remarks. The two words were used as comic relief to lessen the pain or highlight the mundane nature of readymade advice.
In the blink of an eye, the trend evolved. Now, reels are making fun of people with disabilities. Jokes — especially satire — are inherently embedded in power dynamics. We are always laughing at someone or something but the key factor is the identity of the subject. Is the laughter empowering, or is it reinforcing a stereotype, or — in this case — offending a group of people whose lives in India are already challenging due to lack of infrastructure, sensitivity or understanding?
We are nowhere close to living in a world where disability is not a disadvantage.
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Lack of creativity
The music draws from a chorus of song, Džanum, by Serbian singer Teya Dora. She repeats the words ‘moje more’, which means ‘my nightmares’ as she sings about despair and misery. When it became a craze, ‘moje more’ had morphed into ‘moye moye’.
The ‘moye moye’ reels lack creativity. It’s always a few people mocking disability and then dancing. The plots of these reels barely make one laugh.
Everyone adding to the trend is just competing to be more cringe than others on social media. The descent of cringe into insensitivity is a reflection of how reels are a double-edged sword.
Instagram reels often pull people into a vortex of mindless content consumption. This way, disability jokes just become a tiny drop in the vast ocean of content people watch and get de-sensitised to in the process.
The greater sin is making such reels and putting them on social media. Yet, those who consume them without a second thought are no saints—especially when the ‘moye moye’ trend has transcended online space, with people dancing while pretending to be disabled at weddings and parties.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)