Who are the Talibros? Meet the content creators braving Afghanistan

It’s the kind of video you’d expect to stumble upon on a jihadist message board in 2004: three hooded hostages kneeling, their captors standing grim-faced behind them, Kalashnikovs poised like punctuation marks. The lighting is harsh, the script familiar — a finger jabs at the air, a threat is uttered, and you brace for the worst. Except this time, the script flips. The hood comes off, and instead of a terrified prisoner, there’s an American influencer with a movie-star grin and a cheery “Welcome to Afghanistan!” The scene cuts to pull-ups on tank barrels, selfies with Kalashnikovs, and tourists laughing in the shadow of a regime that once banned music and stoned women. This is not satire. It’s marketing — part of a growing trend in which a new breed of social-media provocateurs