As missiles sailed through the sky above the UAE, some of its more vocal expats were aghast that life in the Middle East is not all low tax and M&S

Olivia Ovenden

‘I’m scared. I’m actually so scared,” the Australian influencer Louise Starkey wailed last week from her Dubai balcony as what appeared to be an Iranian missile sailed through the sky above her. “It’s not meant to be happening here. Can’t everyone just chill out?”

That final diplomatic proposal aside, Starkey’s words did unintentionally include a genuinely enlightening admission. “Here”, meaning where they live, is the only place of safety that matters for the professionally self-obsessed cohort of influencers who have decamped to the United Arab Emirates for a life of clean streets, low taxation, year-round sunshine and western conveniences. Saying the quiet part not only out loud but with large subtitles, Starkey made clear that missiles were supposed to happen in the other regions of the Middle East, not those with nine branches of Marks & Spencer and a newly announced Harry Potter theme park.

Starkey paid the price for “living life out loud on the internet”, as her bio proclaims, receiving widespread criticism for her staggering insensitivity. “Dubai me a river, hun”, was the general gist in the comments. The video, which featured her wearing a white robe, with full makeup, and a facial expression like Edvard Munch’s The Scream reimagined for the girlies who can’t move their foreheads, was soon deleted. Perhaps Starkey saw sense; perhaps she couldn’t take the trolling. More likely she was gently reminded that “living life out loud” was not always permitted within the T&Cs of Dubai, where anyone who publishes information or visuals “damaging or tainting the reputation, prestige or dignity of the UAE” will be imprisoned for five years and fined up to 500,000 dirhams (about £102,000)….

https://observer.co.uk/news/columnists/article/dubais-influencers-discover-you-cant-curate-a-war

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