Then came the pandemic. Suddenly, 200 million Indonesians were glued to their screens, but not the communal TV in the living room. They were on , TikTok , and Instagram Reels .
It is authentic. It is unpolished. And it is the most popular video genre in Indonesia right now. To a foreign ear, Indonesian popular videos sound like chaos. A mix of Betawi slang, Javanese honorifics, English buzzwords ("savage!" "toxic!"), and the thump of a DJ remix of a dangdut koplo beat.
The Keroncong orchestra is still playing in the background. It is just being sampled on a TikTok beat, at 2x speed, with a ghost filter applied.