Suzy el-Ordoneya and the politics of social media fame

In early August of this year, 18-year-old Mariam Ibrahim—known as "Suzy the Jordanian" (Suzy el-Ordoneya), one of the most famous names on Egyptian and Arab social media platforms—broke from her usual routine. In a live TikTok broadcast lasting no more than ten minutes, her face was pale, her eyes wide with fear, her hands trembling and her voice was heavy, like that of a drowning person crying out for help.

She said there had been an attempt to make her a scapegoat for people profiting from social media in unethical ways. "I'm a girl, not a boy, and I am to be imprisoned. My mother is a working woman, my father is a working man. You can't imagine what it would do to me, or to my parents, if I were imprisoned for something that could tarnish my reputation and destroy my future."

Just a few hours after that broadcast, an armed patrol raided her home and took her into custody, where she remains. She is now under legal investigation into her sudden rise in wealth and social status, alongside others, in what is now being referred to as—and will likely always be remembered as—the "TikTok content creators crackdown".

Five years earlier, during a period remembered fondly by some and bitterly by others, influencers Haneen Hossam and Mawada El-Adham endured the same treatment, likely for similar underlying reasons. They were taken away at night by armed forces that raided their homes and detained them on several charges. The most shocking of the accusations levelled at the pair were human trafficking, inciting girls to practice indirect prostitution, broadcasting morally obscene, offensive content and contributing to the corruption of human nature.

Two years later, comedy content creators became the focus. Five young men were arrested for a video satirising the experience of visiting a prisoner in an Egyptian jail. The most famous case in the crackdown remains that of the Egyptian-Italian dancer Souad Hafez, known as "Linda Martino", who was arrested at Cairo Airport last June on near-identical charges to the rest.

A challenge to "national morality"

The faces, places, times, legal contexts and linguistic details may differ, but the thread is the same: malleable accusations and prosecutions sparked by zealous public condemnations, all in fierce defence of what is referred to as "national morality". A small phone camera can open the gates to a personal hell—making you hypervisible, and perhaps wealthy, but without the state's permission.

Throughout human history, across successive eras, political regimes—especially "stratocratic" (military) governments—have sought to forge narratives that legitimise their presence in social space and allow them to intervene at will to control the societal class hierarchy. Plato's "Republic", with its vision of the Socratic ideal city, can be understood as the first attempt to explain such a hierarchy, wherein the state stands above everyone, monitoring each individual and the place one should occupy.

In the Arab world, and in Egypt particularly, both fundamentalist and moderate regimes have sought to formulate an official morality, less tied to politics and more representative of a strong tendency within society to dress morality in the garb of religion, law and tradition. Here, morality is not simply a set of behavioural rules, but an authoritarian tool for subduing society: through media and digital censorship, the surveillance of individual habits, and the elevation of obedience and submission into national virtues. As the line between freedom and taboo, between exercising rights and violating virtue, is drawn, loyalty comes to be measured by compliance.

Punishing social ascent

Suzy the Jordanian, the pseudonym chosen by Mariam, expressing her family's dream of moving to Jordan, rose to prominence with her improvised, street-smart, rhymed monologues and her vulnerable presence on camera. Like Haneen Hossam, Mawada El-Adham and other influencers, she climbed to an unexpected social height, ascending from one class to another in a matter of a few years. Today, she finds herself accused of "violating Egyptian family values and principles," a charge that has been legally controversial since its introduction in the 2018 Anti-Cybercrime Law.

Suzy was not merely a victim of state authority, but of the authority of Egyptian society, which saw in her rapid rise a reflection of its own inadequacy, and in her personal success an affront to its collective dignity. People asked: Where did this girl—without a respectable education, without even the accent that might let her pass as someone from "Égypte" (a term popularised by the upper class)—come from? What gave her the right to climb the slow, humiliating ladder of class ascent with such speed?

This social anger, tinged with class envy, was the popular face of official state morality. Even the Egyptian Actors Syndicate warned its members against working with Suzy, seemingly responding to the pressures of both society and the state. State authority seemed to constrain the body, while societal authority went for the soul, leaving Suzy trapped—vulnerable yet somehow able to unmask an entire system of false morality.

"Family values" as a tool of repression

The state is not prosecuting these girls to protect any social values, but rather to redraw the boundaries of what is permitted and forbidden. Egyptian human rights organisations say that these trials reflect the Egyptian authorities' stance against free use of the internet and their ongoing monitoring of social media accounts under the pretext of "protecting family values."

This use of morality is not a local innovation: fascism and Nazism presented their projects in terms of "moral purity". Totalitarian regimes have long cloaked their repressive policies in the language of virtue and of protecting public decency. In the Arab world, campaigns targeting "TikTok girls" have been used to divert attention from corruption, unemployment and repression. Publicly attacking a dancer seems to be an easier way of generating support for the government than actually confronting real issues.

Since the early days of TikTok, the platform has been viewed not merely as a form of entertainment but as a tool to generate wealth from the digital void. American sixteen-year-old Charli D'Amelio became the app's most famous face, earning millions of dollars. Senegal's Khaby Lame, rose from the margins of society to top the follower charts, becoming richer than some Senegalese politicians thanks to his silent skits.

They were not great scientists or artists, but they understood that the economy now flows through the phone screen, and that the "digital expanse" is an inescapable reality. But when this reality reaches the Arab context, it becomes a threat: wealth accumulation is not tolerated without the state's permission. These regimes see in every broadcast a crack in their legitimacy, and in every advertisement a potential escape from their control.