Social media and digital life

Social media and digital life are a satirical target that moved from the periphery of the campaign to its centre. The stance is mixed: the campaign is critical of digital disconnection but affectionate toward the people caught up in it, and its consistent verdict is that real-world connection beats the screen.

Digital references appear peripherally in the early 2010s — 2012 and 2013 fold viral phenomena like Gangnam Style into their topical reference density — but the theme becomes central in 2020 “Lambalytica”, where a secret organisation uses mass surveillance, parodying the Cambridge Analytica scandal, to lure digitally-isolated Australians back to a barbecue. Here lamb is the “algorithm” that actually works, and the target is Big Tech, social media fakery and slacktivism.

2025 “The Comments Section” is the campaign’s most direct engagement with the digital era. Using literalised metaphor, the online comment section becomes a toxic physical stadium, complete with conspiracy theorists and keyboard warriors, which Kekovich’s arrival with a barbecue physically empties. It does not target any specific political position; it targets the entire practice of angry online commentary, with a knowing fourth-wall wink as one commenter hopes the ad itself gets nice comments.

The stance changed from peripheral to central: digital criticism moved from a passing reference to social media being framed as the primary threat to Australian community life. Throughout, the campaign is careful not to mock the individuals — the person caught in the feed is never the target; the system that divided them from the barbecue is.

This target expresses the campaign’s recurring digital-versus-real tension, and the sources note that after two tech-parody ads in 2020 and 2025, the underlying insight remains valid but the execution needs to keep differing. It connects closely to the social media and culture-wars satire.